We are forced to admit that the outlook of Germany is vast. It is not easy to comprehend how vast. In it, individual welfare has been sacrificed as ruthlessly as the Samurai Creed sacrificed it, centuries ago, in Japan. We call this _barbarism_. Germany has been cut latest of the European nations by the disease, _civilization_. As smallpox, other ills of flesh, are more fatal in a young, fresh race, not before visited by it, so young Germany fresh from the forests, the fens, felt the disease, _civilization_. For her it has been most deadly. I recall the school on the plains. School is probably too important a word. It was a few bare rooms over a business block. No building for the purpose had been put up. From the windows we could look across the Main Street into upper rooms of other buildings. These rooms had been rented to houses of ill fame. Any time we could turn from our lessons and see the painted creatures lolling in the rooms, with their lovers. They were fat, greasy, disheveled, and clad in gay, cotton _Mother Hubbards_. Beneath one of these houses there was a saloon. From the windows we could look over tops of screens that cut the too plain view from the sidewalk, and see Greasers, Indians, the stragglers of the plains, drinking, gambling. They quarreled frequently. Occasionally they fought with knives, with pistols. But the thrust of a knife that killed, in the lonely silence of the circling prairie was unimportant. It was as if I saw it all far off through sheets of crystal. There was nothing I wanted. It represented the forces from which I longed to get away. As I walked about the streets of this settlement on the plains, drenched with sun and breeze-swept, I was conscious of an unknown world of art. I used to say to myself: I can not know the heights of life, wealth, power. I can not have things that do not depend upon myself. But, with my brain, I can know the heights of art. I can know all men have dreamed. I learned languages as other women learn to sew. For me they kept few difficulties. My foreign tutor, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, who knew many tongues, was introducing me to books of the Old World. He had a library of his own, of which he was good enough to give me use. His name was Arnold Jeannerett. I was dazed at first, breathless, at this introduction to the sumptuous Palaces of Thought. Less and less I saw the world about me. It faded away with its crudity, harsh, noisy contrasts; discomforts; its persistent attempt to make life miserable for me. Nothing remained but a place of enchantment where there were no imperfections, and everything was as I wished. I read Ariosto. I learned to know Petrarch, and the classics of Italy. I read the splendid prose of France; Bossuet, Fenelon, Chateaubriand, Rousseau. I read the lyric poets of Germany. Hidden upon my person somewhere, either in a pocket in my calico petticoat, or else within the lining of my hat, was some tiny book of the Old World.