Villa Elsa | Page 8

they were more flourishing than ever--the generally acknowledged nation of masters!
And his bed--the German bed. He could not remember whether Mark Twain ever described it, but he should have. Gard's haven of rest appeared to lie on solid foundations. It was constructed with German stability. There were as many blankets in summer as in winter.
Worst of all, two immense feather pillows lay across its middle. The only place for them seemed to be on his sorely tried stomach or on the floor. In a month an attack of insomnia resulted. For hours at night he lay awake, listening to the frequent rain on the roof or the wind whining Teutonically in the leaves of his linden.
In his initial troubles and anxieties he went to a German doctor. This spectacled wise man prescribed more beer. German physicians seemed to be in league with the brewers. Gard was of the kind who would suffer rather than complain. So he worried along.
He did not fall in with the urgent, conscientious assumption of the Buchers that he would at once want to begin driving away at "lessons." His hosts reminded him openly at times that his prospective teachers were still waiting, still recommending themselves. Responsibility was evidently felt for his programme of work. He realized that he was somewhat disappointing, for instruction, education, is such a pushing, unceasing business with the Germans. It may be said they never finish school.
Yet he wished first to take a good look at the historic city, its celebrated art treasures. He wanted to make a few excursions in the environs before the winter set in with its dampness and gloom. Besides, he never before had had a chance at fine opera, at fine symphonies and music recitals.
"But ought not Herr Kirtley at least begin with the free evening lectures?"--with which Dresden shone through the illuminations of many profound and oracular professors in lofty pulpits. He submitted that his German was too feeble of wing to enable him to soar into the heights of such wisdom.
The zest in Germany for learning and accomplishments was truly wonderful to him. Half his life of instruction now quickly seemed to have been idling. As far as industriousness, drilling, well-defined ambitiousness, were concerned, the young German had many advantages.
The modest Bucher household was run educationally with the dynamic regularity of military establishments. It was, of course, no exception. Lessons and lectures commenced mornings at eight, with Sundays partly included. This routine begins with the German child at six.
Evenings, too, had their busy duties. No baseball, no tennis, no lazy days of swimming and fishing. Playtime was spent in martial exercise, in evenings at the opera or seeing the classical dramas of all races and epochs on the stage. Gard became aware that the Bucher children had carried six or seven studies at an age when he had thought he was abused, overburdened, with four.
Besides, their courses were more mature. And yet he had come to Germany, despite Rebner's eulogiums of the Germans, with the complacent idea that, as he was the respectable American average, he could look the other youth of the world in the face unashamed, asking no odds.
Little Ernst at fifteen was studying, among numerous things, philosophy and didactic religion. The way he could cite facts and carry on a discussion on these and similar subjects!
"What part do philosophy and religion play in our system of instruction for the young?" Gard asked himself with a deprecatory smile. "Is it a miracle that the Germans can teach us desirable knowledge and morals, as Rebner insists?"
Kirtley readily perceived that he had scarcely sufficient precise information to discuss intelligently general topics with this boy. The latter could always quote some acknowledged and ponderous authority--German, of course, and all the more awe-inspiring, but of whom Gard had not heard. For it usually came down to the question, Who are your authorities? He rarely could tell who his were. They promptly faded away before all the weight and definiteness Ernst could bring to bear.
While Rudolph and Ernst were so far along as a result of a busy adolescence, Fr?ulein Elsa, as Gard discovered, was in her way not behind. She knew English and French pretty well and was quite an accomplished musician, able to play from memory on the winged Pleyel almost whole books of classic music. She could paint fairly well in oil and was now taking up etching with enthusiastic assiduity. She could sew, cook, run the house. In brief, her days were as full as her brothers' in propelling tasks. She, apparently, did not have "boys on the brain."
Kirtley threw up his hands in imitation of his venerated professor. This was just an ordinary German miss. He had scarcely dreamed of such things in a girl.
It was all illustrated by Gard's piano playing,