My Life

by Josiah Flynt

The insinuating suggestion at the last piqued me somewhat, but I continued to listen to Professor Schmoller for another long semester.

My minors—I hardly recall now what they were. One major and two or three minors were required, I believe, and one of the minors had to be the History of Philosophy. One semester in this subject was usually considered sufficient. So I must have listened to lectures on this subject, and I recall other courses in German Literature. But I am afraid that my professors at the time would be hard put to it, in looking over to-day the selected courses in my Anmelde-Buch, to make out what I was driving at. But in spite of all this confusion and floundering about, I was busy, after all, on my own private ends. I may not have got much from the lectures, but I came in contact with such men as Virchow, the pathologist; Kiepert, the geographer; Curtius, the Greek historian; Pfleiderer, the theologian; Helmholtz, the chemist, and I got glimpses of Mommsen. He was not reading in the university during my stay in Berlin, but he lived not far from my mother's home, and I used to see him in the street cars. He was a very much shriveled-up looking individual, and when sitting down looked very diminutive. He wore immense glasses, which gave his eyes an owlish appearance; I saw him to the best advantage one afternoon when we were riding alone in a street car through the Thiergarten. He had a corner in the front, and I had taken one in the rear. I hardly noticed him at first, and had opened a book to read, when suddenly the old gentleman began to mumble to himself and gesture. "Ya, ya, so ist es," I could hear him say. "So muss es sein," and he flourished his right hand about as if he were speaking to a collection of Roman senators. What it was that was "so," and why it had to be "so," I could not find out. Perhaps he was arguing a deep polemical point with an imaginary adversary, and perhaps he was merely having a little tiff with the police. He was the proud father of twelve children, more or less, and no Berlin landlord, so the story runs, would rent him a flat. He consequently lived in Charlottenburg, where, I have heard, that he told the police what he thought of them and their regulations.

The most interesting interview that I had with any of my professors was with Virchow. At the time of the interview I was corresponding for a New York newspaper intermittently, and, one day, word came from the editor that a "chat" with Virchow on the political situation would be "available." (This word available formerly troubled me a great deal in my encounters with editors, but I have at last come to terms with it. When an editor uses it, it pays to look into a good dictionary and see how many different applications it has. Its editorial significance is most elastic.) Virchow kindly granted me an interview and told me some interesting things about his fight for Liberal ideas. But he was most entertaining when talking "science." Our political chat finished, he asked me whether I was interested in Anthropology, advising me that the local Anthropological Society was to have a meeting that same evening, and that I would be welcome. I told him that I was interested in Anthropology in so far as it threw light on Criminology. The old gentleman must have mistaken my meaning, or I did not know myself what I was trying to say, for my reply startled him into what seemed to me unwonted nervous activity. During the political chat he had been very quiet and calm, talking even about Bismarck in a rather subdued voice. But when I ventured to connect Anthropology and Criminology, barely mentioning Lombroso's name, it was as if some one had thrown a stone through the window. Virchow jumped up from his chair, and cried: "There you are on false ground. Let me give you a pamphlet of mine that will put you right," and he rushed into his adjoining study for a paper that had something to do with cells, etc. I might understand it to-day, but it read like Sanscrit at the time. "There," said the little man, handing me the brochure. "That will give you my ideas on that subject." In other men this proceeding might have indicated conceit. With Virchow it was merely a friendly desire to set me right on a matter which he had thought a million times more about than I possibly could have. He seemed literally to feel aggrieved that anyone should be in the dark about a matter on which he had tried to shed light.

Later, when showing him a written copy of our political interview, I had to look him up in his famous den, in the Pathological Institute, I think it was. The room was so full of skulls, bones and "pickled" things that it was all one could do not to knock something over when moving about. I had to leave the manuscript with him for correction. He sent it to me a few days afterward with neatly written marginal notes in his own handwriting. Of all the men I met at the university, he was distinctly the most famous and affable.

His famous political antagonist, Bismarck, a man that Virchow seemed to hate, judging by his manner when discussing him, I saw but once. It was not long before his dismissal from office, and he was returning from the Emperor's palace, where he had gone to give him birthday congratulations. I was standing in front of the Café Bauer on the Unter den Linden just as Bismarck's carriage came by. I shall always remember his strong face and remarkable big eyes, but this was about all that I saw. A woman recognized Bismarck just as I did, and ran toward his carriage, crying: "Oh, Prince Bismarck! Prince Bismarck!" There was something in her manner which made one think that she wanted to ask some favor of the great man, and had been waiting for his appearance. The mournful note in her voice might have meant anything—a son in prison, a dying soldier husband, a mere request for bread. The driver of the horses was taking no chances, however, and the great chancellor was whisked away toward Wilhelm Strasse.

The diminutive and modest Virchow could reconstruct our notions about pathology and medicine and at the same time be a great Liberal, but he could not tolerate Bismarck. The monstrous chancellor could reunite Germany, dictate her foreign policy for years, and hold his own, in and out of parliament, as a master mind, but he could not associate with Virchow. Two great Germans, both iconoclasts and builders, both dwellers in the same city, and both much admired and criticised—but they needed separate sides of the street when abroad—a fact, by the way, which goes much to help out the other fact demonstrating German Kleinlich Kelt—smallness.

When all is said and done about my university career I think that the good it did me was accomplished mainly in the Royal Library and in the Thiergarten—a natural park in the center of the city, where I could invite my soul comfortably in the winter, say at ten degrees above zero, and in summer at about seventy degrees of heat—all this—a la Fahrenheit, by the way, who has no following in Germany, either zero-wards or otherwise. The library advanced me ten books at a draw in any language I felt equal to, and the Thiergarten helped me to ponder over what I had read and did not understand. Certainly no professor ever felt more learned than I did when I tramped through the park to my home, with the ten books slung over my shoulder. My mother used to love to see me come into the house after this fashion, and even my fox-terrier, Spicer, put on a learned look peculiarly her own when she deigned to observe my studious tendencies. More anon about this almost human little creature, but I must say right here that, in her early days, she did not take kindly to my "shortening-up" habits. She believed in beer, much food and exercise, Uferlos pow-wowing.

What it was, in the Library or Thiergarten, that switched me, when reading, from Political Economy to Africa, Livingstone, Burton, Speke and Stanley, it is a little difficult to explain. In the final analysis I suppose it was mere temperament. By my third semester I knew ten times more about Africa than I knew about my own country, and an unfathomable number of times more than I ever will know about Political Economy. Burton was the man I particularly took to, and to this day he remains on a very high pinnacle in my estimation of men.

This kind of reading naturally did not bring me any nearer my Ph. D. But it taught me to keep quiet, dodge Die Ferne, and to take an interest in what other men had done—to remember that all the traveling in the world was never intended to be done by me. Of course, I had dreams of becoming an explorer, but they were harmless arm-chair efforts, that gave my mother no anxiety, and were profitable in so far as I seriously studied geography. Possibly, had a berth in an exploring expedition been offered me, I should have been tempted to take it; but no such opportunity came to hand.

My companions in the university were nearly all Streber, young men who were determined to promoviren. A more mixed collection of friends I have never had. My most intimate "pal" was a Japanese, the others next intimate were a Greek, a German-American, a British-American, some bona fide Teutons, and my dog Spicer—the latter being in the university by proxy, so to speak. In the early semesters we did pretty much what all students at German universities do. Here in the United States there are minute observers of college morals who would have said that we were all bound devil-wards. We attended Kneipen, spent our Sundays in the Gruhewald, and would schwänzen—omit attendance at lectures, when convenient. But all of my friends except one have done well. The unfortunate exception was probably the most strenuous streber in the company. He took his degree with all sails set for a promised professorship at home, went home, was disappointed in what he had been led to think he was to teach, became discouraged and despondent, and finally tossed himself in front of a train. Poor "Zink"! He had studied History and wanted to give lectures about it. The western college trustees, who had promised him a chair in History, insisted on his teaching Grammar also, or some other subject that he had paid no attention to since college days, and his sense of the fitness of things revolted. He had specialized honestly and fearlessly, and he desired to continue as a specialist. The college trustees wanted a complete faculty in one or two men, and "Zink" would not submit. If any man deserved fairer treatment, this old university friend did.