It was. Joe Kramer arriving in Paris at midnight on a punctured tire, and cursing the cobblestone pavements over which he had hunted us out. A hot supper, a bottle of wine, a genial beam on all three of us, and Joe told his story. After leaving college, from New York he had gone to Kansas City, and by the "livest paper" there he had been sent abroad with a bike to do a series of "Sunday specials." He had come over steerage and written an expose of his passage. He had two weeks for Paris and then was off to Berlin and Vienna. "I'm just breaking ground this time, boys," he said. "I want to get the hang of the countries and a start in their infernal languages." The next day he began to break ground in our city. Early the next morning I found Joe propped up in bed scowling into _Le Matin_ as he tried to butt his way through the language into the news events of the day. What I tried to tell him of the Paris I had found made no appeal whatever. "All right, Kid," he said indulgently. "If I had a dozen lifetimes I might be a poet. But I haven't, so I'll just be a reporter." And he and his bike plunged into the town. He found its "newspaper row" that day and a Frenchman to whom he had a letter. With this man Joe went to the Bourse and that night to the Chamber of Deputies. He got "Sunday specials" out of them both, and then went on to the Bourse de Travail. And in the few spare moments he had, Joe told us of the things he had seen. Rumors of war and high finance, trade unions, strikes and sabotage burst on my startled artist's ears. It made me think of the harbor! _This_ was not my Paris! "It is," said J. K. stoutly. "There's no place like a newspaper office to put you right next to the heart of a town." He would not hear to our seeing him off. I remember him that last night after supper strapping his bag onto his bike and starting off down our quiet old street on his way to the station. "To-morrow," he said, "I'll stop off in Leipsic. I want to have a look at the college that stirred my young grandfather up for life. I've got his diary with me." Again, in spite of the gruffness, I felt that wistful quality in him. J. K. was hunting for something too. CHAPTER X But what a relief to see him go, to forget his loud disturbing Paris and again drink deep of mine, the city of great writers. "I'll never really know them," I thought, "until I can not only talk but think and feel in their language." So I drudged for hours a day in my room. I inflicted my French on my chums at meals, on defenseless drivers of 'buses who could not rise and go away, and on the Blessed Damozel, who said: "Va donc, cherches-toi une fille. C'est la seule maniere d'apprendre le Francais."