I regret to say that my respected friend reminded me just then of Balaam smiting the ass when she refused to follow the path he had chosen. But I did not urge the parable aloud. How could a modern man of business agree to the contention that his son had set in motion an irresistible natural force? Most certainly he “stood in a narrow place, and there was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left.” But Karl’s obvious wishes should be respected. I pretended to agree with his father. I used the customary platitudes anent his career and the necessity there was to endeavor in future to repress any manifestation of his sixth sense. And while I was talking, I saw the ghost of a sad smile flickering on Karl’s lips, because he knew that I knew better. I laughed myself (ostensibly at some trivial remark by the elder Grier that there would be some sense in telegnomy if Karl could summon a waiter quickly by its exercise) when I thought of Hooper’s scorn of the notion that a fellow shouldn’t see through a brick wall if he had the power. I was sure that he would pounce on the suggestion as another instance of British disinclination to adopt new ideas! We parted soon, and I regard it as not the least amazing feature of my really close association with Karl that I did not see him again for five years. That is the sort of queer prank the tides of existence will play occasionally with the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. The great highways of rail and ocean may be bringing the whole family of the globe into closer communion, but they have, too, the strange result of separating units in a way not dreamed of by our forefathers. Thus, when my wife and I were in the Western States of America, Karl was in Germany, making the acquaintance of his mother’s relatives, and learning again the iron-clamped syllables which bind German thought in words which are whole phrases. We came back to Europe, to watch the upspringing of our own youngster, and we transferred bag and baggage to Heidelberg at the time chosen by Mr. and Mrs. Grier to establish themselves in a house in Curzon Street, Mayfair. Of course we kept in touch by correspondence. Mrs. Grier and my wife sent each other family news, Grier gave me occasional “tips” which, by operation of that wonderful machine, the Stock Exchange, took money from some stranger’s pocket and put it into mine, merely because one of us bought and the other sold stock, which neither of us possessed, in a railway, or a mine, or an industrial company, in which we had not the slightest commercial interest.