My companion on this first exploration of Germany was a gentleman considerably older than myself. He was a stalwart Norwegian, perhaps forty years of age, with a burly blond beard, a great "bundle of hair," as the tramps say, and a pugnacious belief in the prohibition of the liquor traffic. Physically, Nietzsche's _guter grosser blondes Mensch_ was found in him to a nicety. Some months before my arrival in Berlin, he appeared at my mother's door one evening and said in a western nasal drawl: "Glad to meet you. Believed in your sister-in-law's principles, and thought I'd come around and call." My mother saw in him at first merely the typical Prohibitionist with a long rehearsal of the reasons why, if need be, one should go dry in a waterless, but alcoholic neighborhood. A partial rehearsal there was, and then the tall, blond man from "Minnesoty" got to talking most interestingly about the university, philosophy, religion, Norway--and Ibsen. He spoke also of his native language, of literature in general, and of men in "Minnesoty" who were trying to make a new Norwegian literature. Ibsen was much discussed at the time, and "Nora" was the talk of the town. It had become almost an affair of state whether Nora did right in leaving her home, and decidedly a matter of etiquette whether a husband should, or should not, offer a disappearing wife an umbrella on a rainy night. (The "Doll's House," as I saw it, presumed a storm outside.) Ibsen was living in Munich in those days. Our friend, the Norwegian, wrote to Ibsen, and asked him whether he would receive two Americans anxious to pay their respects to him. It had been decided that the Norwegian and I should make _Rundreise_ together, and Munich was included in our itinerary. Ibsen replied to the Norwegian's letter in very neat handwriting, that he was usually at home in the Maximilian strasse at eleven o'clock, and that callers usually looked in on him at that hour. There was no conventional etiquette about the note; we were not even told that we should be welcome. The small missive might have been a dentist's "time card" so far as it expressed any sentiment. But scrupulously to the point it certainly was. Later Ibsen told us that so many people wrote to him that he had been compelled to boil his correspondence down as much as possible. The journey to Munich in company with the Norwegian was very similar to all students' outings, and need not be described in detail here. The talk with Ibsen, our unheard of abstemiousness in restaurants, and the pains that we were at to see everything on a five pfennig tipping basis, were the only special features of the trip. [Illustration: Madam Willard. Josiah Flynt's Grandmother]