This summer of 1871 we made many little foot excursions with the Brentanos, the Kinkels, or the Scherrs. The whole party was always more or less literary. Even Mrs. Scherr had written her book, much liked by German housewives. These afternoon walks have been to points along the beautiful lake or to some near valley, and often to the Uetliberg or to Rüssnacht. We always turned up at some simple country beer garden, with its quiet tables under shady bowers, where the beer and the pretzels were good, and the view fine of lake and mountain. What delightful times we have had with our cheap lunches of black bread, beer and cheese and much talking! We walked home by dusk, always stopping at many a vantage point, to look in wonder at the sunset and the gorgeous glow on the Alps. I never saw these sunsets in the Alps without thinking of another world. They seemed to belong to something more beautiful, more lasting than our mere lives. If I spoke of it, however, Scherr would shrug his shoulders and say, “Ich glaub’ es nicht. Wir werden es nur hoffen,” and once he added: “The whole world is but a graveyard. Above the door is written _The End_.” Mrs. Scherr always smiled and said, “No, it is not so, what he says. What is all that grandeur that you see over there in the mountains for? Surely not only for a little party like us to gaze on, of an afternoon, and then say good-by to, forever. No, it is not true. I expect to see the beautiful mountains, and with these friends, too, a thousand years from now.” Alas! sooner than we knew, she was to look beyond these Alps. A heart trouble, aggravated by the _deeper_ heart trouble of a mother, through a wayward son, suddenly terminated her life. Just after leaving our home, one day, where she had been calling, she fell dead upon the steps of St. Peter’s church. I was present at this friend’s funeral, conducted in accordance with German Swiss custom. An old woman had carried the funeral notices to the friends. They were printed on large, full sheets of paper, with black edges an inch wide. The woman, in delivering these messages, was in full black, and carried with her an enormous bunch of flowers, apparently a symbol of her office. At the appointed hour I found all our male friends at the house of mourning. It was designated by a broad, black cloth stretched across the front of the building and running up the stairway. Here, in a room denuded of all carpet and furniture, I found Prof. Scherr, waiting to receive the condolence of the invited friends.