as Scheffel wrote of him in his poem, _Numero Acht_, the scene of which is laid in the "Court of Holland." Here a word about Scheffel. During the following semester he was for months a daily table-companion of mine at the Bremer-Eck, where a small circle of students--_quorum pars fui_--met every evening to sup and _kneip_, or to drink beer and smoke and sing until eleven. Little did I dream in those days that he would become the great popular poet of his time, or that I should ever translate his _Gaudeamus_. I owe the "Court of Holland" to this day for a dinner and a bottle of wine. It is the only debt I owe, to my knowledge, to anybody on earth. It was resolved among the Americans that we should all make a foot-excursion with knapsacks down the Rhine to Cologne. It was done. So we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything, making excursions inland now and then. We had a bottle or two of the best Johannisberg in the very Schloss itself--_omne cum praetio_--and meeting with such adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry times. The Rhine was wild as yet, and not paved, swept, garnished and full of modern villas and adornment, as now. I had made, while in America, a manuscript book of the places and legends of and on the Rhine, with many drawings. This, and a small volume of Snow's and Planche's "Legends of the Rhine," I carried with me. I was already well informed as to every village and old ruin or tower on the banks. So we arrived at Cologne, and saw all the sights. The cathedral was not then finished, and the town still boasted its two-and-seventy stinks, as counted by Coleridge. Then we returned by steamer to Mainz, and thence footed it home. Little by little I rather fell away from my American friends, and began to take to German or English associates, and especially to the company of two Englishmen. One was named Leonard Field, who is now a lawyer in Lincoln's Inn Fields; the other was Ewan P. Colquhoun, a younger brother of Sir Patrick Colquhoun, whom I knew well, and as friend, in after years, until his recent death. I always, however, maintained a great intimacy with George Ward, of Boston, who became long after a banker and Baring's agent in America. In one way and another these two twined into my life in after years, and led to my making many acquaintances or friends.