On my return from England I was determined to let her suggest what was best for me to do, having made such a fiasco of the English venture, a suggestion and enterprise of my own. The university and its professors loomed up large in my mother's eyes. If she could only see me once started on such a career, she said, she thought that her cup of happiness would be full, indeed. She was set on having at least one academic child in the family, and my presence in Berlin and willingness to behave, renewed her hopes that this ambition was to be realized. Fortunate it was for her ambition and my sensibilities that the matriculation ceremonies were so simple. My German at the time had been selected principally from the coal-passers' vocabulary, but I was quick in overhauling it, and when ready to matriculate, knew as much of the language probably as does the average American student on first entering the university. On receiving my matriculation certificate from the rector--a very formidable document it was, written in Latin, which I had long since forgotten--shaking hands with him and receiving the faculty's welcome into the institution, I asked that my faulty German be pardoned. "Certainly, Herr Studiosus, certainly," the rector assured me. "You are here to learn; we all are. So excuses are not necessary." This was all the formality that was attached to the entrance ceremony. In five minutes, thanks to the rector, I had changed from a quondam coal passer to a would-be Doctor of Philosophy in the great Friedrich Wilhelm Universitat, a royal institution. The importance of the royal protectorate over the university and the students never impressed me greatly, until a friend of mine had a wordy difference with one of the officials at the Royal Library. My friend was lame, having to use crutches. One day, when entering the room where borrowed books are returned, he proceeded to the desk with his hat on, being unable to remove it until freed of his armful of books. The officious clerk called his attention to the excusable breach of etiquette in none too polite language, adding: "You must remember that I am an Imperial official." "And do you remember," demanded my doughty Greek friend, "that I am an Imperial student." I never had occasion to call attention to my "Imperialism" while in the university, but it was a kind of little joke that I was already to play if opportunity offered.