So it is wherever I have lived on the Continent. Barring a very few exceptions, the American colonists are transient residents that you have barely got acquainted with before they are off to some new tenting ground. Whether such "colossal" life is advantageous for the rearing of children, or not, is a question which each camping family decides for itself. In the case of young men, students for example, it has its advantages and disadvantages. In my own case I think it worked well for a time. It was not compulsory; I could have returned to America at any time. And it afforded me an opportunity to see how clean I could keep my record sheet in a community unacquainted with my previous devilishness. There was no local reason whatever why I should not hold my head just as high as anybody--a privilege which, I believe, goes a long way in explaining the pride I took in trying to deserve such a right. It is a far cry from the stoke-room of an ocean liner to a refined home and unexcelled educational opportunities. No one who had seen me passing coal on the _Elbe_ would ever have expected to meet me in the lecture rooms of the Berlin University, a few months later, a full-fledged student in the "philosophical faculty." And no one was more surprised at such a metamorphosis than the student himself. It came about in this way: For a fortnight or so after reaching Berlin there was little that I felt equal to beyond sitting in my mother's library, resting and reading. The little "Dutch" outfit made me presentable at least, and I was welcome to spend as much time as I liked browsing among the books. It seemed strange for a while, to sit there in comfort and ease, after the long tramp trip and the voyage on the _Elbe_, but I soon found myself fitting into the new arrangement without much difficulty. The coal-passing experience had exhausted my physical resources more than I had at first imagined, and for days lying on a lounge was about as much as I felt up to. It was during this period, I recall, that I read Livingstone's "Travels in Africa," George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda," some of John Stuart Mills' "Political Economy" and chapters in German history. I seemed to take as naturally to this selection in my reading as I had formerly taken to tramp trips--testimony, it seems to me, that two sets of forces were always at work within me. While poring over these books the Road, _Die Ferne_, and my former companionships seemed as foreign to my nature as they could possibly be; indeed, I frequently caught myself looking about the library, with its pleasant appointments, and wondering whether my wanderings were not, after all, simply a nightmare.