The students on a walking holiday from their universities often wandered singing through Nauheim. Somewhat Tyrolese in get-up, sometimes with odd, Byronic collars, too much open at the neck, they wore their knapsacks and the caps that showed their guild. They came generally in the early morning while the invalids were strolling at the Sprudel. The sound of their young voices singing in part-chorus would be heard, growing near, passing close, then dying away melodiously among the trees.

A single little sharp discord vibrated through all this German harmony one day when I learned that in the Empire more children committed suicide than in any other country.

[Pg 33]But soon this discord was lost amid the massive Teutonic polyphony of well-being. Of this well-being knowledge was enlarged by excursions to various towns. To Worms, for instance, that we might see the famous Luther Monument. Part of the journey thither lay through a fine forest. This the city of Frankfurt-am-Main owns and has forested for seven hundred years; using the wood all the time, but so wisely that the supply has maintained itself against the demand. I thought of our own forests, looted and leveled, and of ourselves boasting our glorious future while we obliterated that future's resources. Frankfurt was there to teach us better, had we chosen to learn.