Neither Waterloo, though a thriving little town upon the New York Central Railroad and not far from the city in which I have myself lived, nor even Rochester with all the added power of its excellent university, seemed adequate to develop a being so gorgeous. On questioning him, I found that, having been graduated in America, he had gone to China with certain missionaries, and had then been taken into the Chinese service. It gives me very great pleasure to say that at Berlin, St. Petersburg, and The Hague, where I have often met him since, he has proved to be a thoroughly intelligent and patriotic man. Faithful to China while not unmindful of the interests of the United States, in one matter he rendered a very great service to both countries.
But a diplomatic representative who has a taste for public affairs makes acquaintances outside the diplomatic corps, and is likely to find his relations with the ministers of the German crown and with members of the parliament very interesting. The character of German public men is deservedly high, and a diplomatist fit to represent his country should bring all his study and experience to bear in eliciting information likely to be useful to his country from these as well as from all other sorts and conditions of men. My own acquaintance among these was large. I find in my diaries accounts of conversations with such men as Bismarck, Camphausen, Delbrck, Windthorst, Bennigsen, George von Bunsen, Lasker, Treitschke, Gneist, and others; but to take them up one after the other would require far too much space, and I must be content to jot down what I received from them wherever, in the course of these reminiscences, it may seem pertinent.
CHAPTER XXXI
MEN OF NOTE IN BERLIN AND ELSEWHERE--1879-1881My acquaintance at Berlin extended into regions which few of my diplomatic colleagues explored, especially among members of the university faculty and various other persons eminent in science, literature, and art.
Writing these lines, I look back with admiration and affection upon three generations of Berlin professors:
the first during my student days at the Prussian capital in 1855-1856, the second during my service as minister, 1879-1881, and the third during my term as ambassador 1897-1902.
The second of these generations seems to me the most remarkable of the three. It was a wonderful body of men.
A few of them I had known during my stay in Berlin as a student; and of these, first in the order of time, Lepsius, the foremost Egyptologist of that period, whose lectures had greatly interested me, and whose kindly characteristics were the delight of all who knew him.
Ernst Curtius, the eminent Greek scholar and historian, was also very friendly. He was then in the midst of his studies upon the famous Pergamon statues, which, by skilful diplomacy, the German Government had obtained from the Turkish authorities in Asia Minor, and brought to the Berlin Museum. He was also absorbed in the excavations at Olympia, and above all in the sculptures found there. One night at court he was very melancholy, and on my trying to cheer him, he told me, in a heartbroken tone, that Bismarck had stopped the appropriations for the Olympia researches; but toward the end of the evening he again sought me, his face radiant, and with great glee told me that all was now right, that he had seen the Emperor, and that the noble old monarch had promised to provide for the excavations from his own purse.
Still another friend was Rudolf von Gneist, the most eminent authority of his time upon Roman law and the English constitution. He had acted, in behalf of the Emperor William, as umpire between the United States and Great Britain, with reference to the northwestern boundary, and had decided in our favor. In recognition of his labor, the American Government sent over a large collection of valuable books on American history, including various collections of published state papers; and the first duty I ever discharged as minister was to make a formal presentation of this mass of books to him. So began one of my most cherished connections.
Especially prized by me was a somewhat close acquaintance with the two most eminent professors of modern history then at the university--Von Sybel and Droysen.
Each was a man of great ability. One day, after I had been reading Lanfrey's ``Histoire de Napolon,'' which I then thought, and still think, one of the most eloquent and instructive books of the nineteenth century, Von Sybel happened to drop in, and I asked his opinion of it. He answered: ``It does not deserve to be called a history; it is a rhapsody.'' Shortly after he had left, in came Droysen, and to him I put the same question, when he held up both hands and said: ``Yes, there is a history indeed!
That is a work of genius; it is one of the books which throw a bright light into a dark time: that book will live.''
Professor Hermann Grimm was then at the climax of his fame, and the gods of his idolatry were Goethe and Emerson; but apparently he did not resemble them in soaring above the petty comforts and vexations of life.
Any one inviting him to dine was likely to receive an answer asking how the dining-room was lighted--whether by gas, oil, or wax; also how the lights were placed--whether high or low; and what the principal dishes were to be:
and on the answer depended his acceptance or declination.
Dining with him one night, I was fascinated by his wife; it seemed to me that I had never seen a woman of such wonderful and almost weird powers: there was something exquisitely beautiful in her manner and conversation; and, on my afterward speaking of this to another guest, he answered: ``Why, of course; she is the daughter of Goethe's Bettina, to whom he wrote the `Letters to a Child.' ''
