Spite of my sympathy for his suffering, I could at times hardly refrain from smiling, on hearing him exclaim: “Ah! that was a whacker, that catch was--must write that down. Let me see--lasted two minutes, pulse 80; this day, last year, minute and a half, pulse 100.” So for an hour he would sit, his feet wrapped in flannel, and his mind occupied in measuring and timing his pains. “What do you do that for, Professor?” I asked him once. “My God!” he replied, “it helps busy my mind. I would die without this watch and diary.” In the afternoon the attack would cease, and in the evening the students would see the loved Professor delivering his lecture as smilingly as if he had never had a pain in his life. _December, 1875._--Through Fick, Kinkel, Scherr and others of our friends among the University professors, we had free entrée to lectures when we pleased; could come or go. Scherr’s on France, and Kinkel’s on art, we heard throughout, as also Henne’s on Swiss history. There were numbers of American students too in the Polytechnic and University, so that our relations with teachers and taught were very friendly. The American students were always at our home on all American holidays, when the Consulate and our apartment were opened up together and decorated with our national colors. Speeches were made, toasts drunk, and a general good American time had. We ourselves greatly enjoyed these reunions on a foreign soil, and the students and American residents gave many proofs that they enjoyed them too. I recall how just before one Christmas, Mrs. Kelley, wife of Congressman Kelley, of Philadelphia, who was then living in Zurich, asked me to go with her to help select a picture for an American friend. I felt honored that she should consult my taste. A very fine and expensive engraving of Dante at Florence was selected. What was my surprise, on Christmas evening, to see her head the American party to our house, with this picture and a speech to the Consul. The treasured gift hangs in my Iowa home, but the kind words of that Christmas evening are stored away in the depths of our hearts. It was the sign, not the gift itself, that gratified us most. Most of us mortals are so constituted that to have the esteem of our fellow beings gives us a most comfortable feeling _here_, anyway, whatever it may do for us _hereafter_.