IT was quite dark when I finally came across a sort of tap-room “restaurant” whose quaint¹ atmosphere charmed me. The usual pewter plates and tankards adorned² the dull red and brown walls. A line of leather-covered seats followed the walls, in front of which were ranged long tables.
 
My arrival here with a quiet request for food put a sort of panic into the breast of my small but stout³ host, who, when I came in, was playing checkers with another middle-aged⁴ Mayener, but who, when I asked for food, gave over his pleasure for the time being and bustled⁵ out to find his wife. He looked not a little like a fat sparrow.
 
“Why, yes, yes,” he remarked briskly, “what will you have?”
 
“What can I have?”
 
On the instant he put his little fat hand to his semi-bald pate⁶ and rubbed it ruminatively⁷. “A steak, perhaps. Some veal⁸? Some sausage?”
 
“I will have a steak, if you don’t mind and a cup of black coffee.”
 
He bustled out and when he came back I threw a new bomb into camp. “May I wash my hands?”
 
“Certainly, certainly,” he replied, “in a minute.” And he bounded upstairs. “Katrina! Katrina! Katrina!” I heard him call, “have Anna make the washroom ready. He wishes to wash his hands. Where are the towels? Where is the soap?”
 
There was much clattering⁹ of feet overhead. I heard a door being opened and things being moved. Presently450 I heard him call, “Katrina, in God’s name, where is the soap!” More clattering of feet, and finally he came down, red and puffing¹⁰. “Now, mein Herr, you can go up.”
 
I went, concealing¹¹ a secret grin, and found that I had dislocated a store-room, once a bath perhaps; that a baby-carriage had been removed from a table and on it pitcher¹², bowl, towel, and soap had been placed—a small piece of soap and cold water. Finally, after seeing me served properly, he sat down at his table again and sighed. The neighbor returned. Several more citizens dropped in to read and chat. The two youngest boys in the family came downstairs with their books to study. It was quite a typical German family scene.
 
It was here that I made my first effort to learn something about the Dreiser family. “Do you know any one by the name of Dreiser, hereabouts?” I asked cautiously, afraid to talk too much for fear of incriminating myself.
 
“Dreiser, Dreiser?” he said. “Is he in the furniture business?”
 
“I don’t know. That is what I should like to find out. Do you know of any one by that name?”
 
“Is not that the man, Henry,”—he turned to one of his guests—“who failed here last year for fifty thousand marks?”
 
“The same,” said this other, solemnly (I fancied rather feelingly).
 
“Goodness, gracious!” I thought. “This is the end. If he failed for fifty thousand marks in Germany he is in disgrace. To think a Dreiser should ever have had fifty thousand marks! Would that I had known him in his palmy days.”
 
“There was a John Dreiser here,” my host said to me, “who failed for fifty thousand marks. He is gone though, now I think. I don’t know where he is.”
 
451
 
It was not an auspicious¹⁴ beginning, and under the circumstances I thought it as well not to identify myself with this Dreiser too closely. I finished my meal and went out, wondering how, if at all, I was to secure any additional information. The rain had ceased and the sky was already clearing. It promised to be fine on the morrow. After more idle rambling¹⁵ through a world that was quite as old as Canterbury I came back finally to my hotel. My host was up and waiting for me. All but one guest had gone.
 
“So you are from America,” he observed. “I would like very much to talk with you some more.”
 
“Let me ask you something,” I rep............