CHAPTER XXI
A People Peculiar or Pagan?
CONCURRENT with all these lively happenings Kirtley had cultivated the acquaintance of Miles Anderson. The two became very friendly. Gard had been so rudely treated by the great German professor in the lecture room that he was quite willing to conclude he could learn from the journalist far more of what he was interested in than from a Teuton university pulpit.
Anderson, like himself, had entered Germany ignorant of the nation and its folk, and fully disposed to find almost everything worthy the highest praise. The elder's vivid convictions, his caustic reflections, were honestly born of what he had seen and heard in different parts of the land, not of what the Germans said of themselves in books, as was the customary rule. By virtue of his calling he had superior opportunities for observation. He was therefore not a negligible imparter of information.
Gard usually found him in a high-ceilinged, majestic chamber in a typical Dresden pension, frequented, however, by only three or four boarders. It was a little like a home for Anderson, even if gloomily august in the German style. Dark woodwork, severely waxed floors on which Gard often slipped violently, huge doors, huge chairs and tables—everything large to suit the national taste for big Teuton gods and supermen. Long, thick stuffs concealed the passageways and windows and contributed to the absence of cheering light—that sign and symbol of the Gothic environment and disposition.
The first question the old man usually plumped was:
"How's your German going?"
"Slowly. Pegging along. I suppose it's because I don't get up much of a liking for it. There's something about it that goes against my grain."