"I'd doi for that goil, I would," one of the boys screamed, and the others made similar teasing remarks. "Alice" gradually recovered and grabbed my neck.
"Save me!" she cried. "Save me! I'm losin' all me high notes."
I "saved" her in double-quick fashion into a cab and sent her home to look for the high notes. I never saw her again, but five years later, when a friend and I were tramping in England, I asked about her in the concert halls in Lime Street, and finally found an old acquaintance who remembered her.
"Oh, that girl!" the acquaintance exclaimed. "She's got seven days. She's dotty. Thinks she's a primer donner. Good thing you an' her never went to housekeeping—ain't it?"
What with my experience with the capricious "Jeminy" of earlier days and with the screeching "Alice," housekeeping has not entered heavily into my life. I must thank "Alice," however, for showing me the folly of trying to be an admiral on a mere coal-passer's experience. Her light-fingered ingenuity and the resulting depletion of my funds also assisted in curing me of the Egyptian fever. The upshot of the trip to England was a hasty return to Germany to try something else—and to celebrate my coming of age. I meant that that event should mark a distinct change in my life, and in many ways it did.
[CHAPTER X]
BERLIN UNIVERSITY
In the early nineties it was easier for foreigners to get into the Berlin University than it is now. To-day, I am told, certificates and diplomas from other institutions must be shown before the student can matriculate. In 1890, my matriculating year, all that was necessary to become enrolled as a student in good standing, was to have a twenty-mark piece in your pocket to pay the matriculation fee, and perhaps fifty marks more to pay for your first semester's lectures. Nothing was asked about your former studies or academic training. The university was open to all male foreigners over seventeen years of age. Germans had to show a Gymnasium certificate, but foreigners were accepted on their face value.