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Show THE CITIZEN SCIENTIFIC BARBARIAN A I HAD passed him once before and had been startled by the waver-inalmost wild look in his eyes. Now he nodded to me with a faint smile and I bowed in some confusion, for I had been staring at him and wonders, . ing. Here was one who had gone away to the war a model of the strong, vital, optimistic American and had returned a mere shadow. As he shuffled along I noticed that his uniform emaciated hung limply about his frame and as my eye followed him I caught a glimpse of the infantry captains insignia. Sheer nervousness caused him to bow to an utter stranger, I assured myself, but hardly had this thought made its way leisurely into my mind than it was expelled by another that gave me a shock. Drake! I gasped. It seemed as if I had recognized him by the last dying ember of my memory, so to speak . But now that recognition had illumined my mind there was no room for doubt. When next I ran across him he was seated at a restaurant table and did not seem so much of a ghost. Arrested by his nod, I shook hands with him and soon we were discussing old times and the war. You were hard hit, I said during the course of the conversation. Yes, he replied listlessly and sadly. His wandering gaze seemed to submerge into an ocean of recollection ,as it were. A moment later he aroused himself and said: I was hard hit, but with neither shell, nor bullet. Hell-shoc- k, rather, I said. he replied ,and appeared unwilling to pursue the subject. As we parted he informed me that he was living at the reconstruction hospital. I shall tell you about it some day if you care to hear, old friend, he said. And one day he told me this story. in April, 1918, the enemy ONE nightour front line northeast of Toul and cut deeply into our supports. To my chagrin I was taken without a scratch, though many a brave lad died on bayonets all around me. The enemy retired as quickly as he had come and took me along with twenty or twenty-fiv- e You probably recall Miss Hughes. She became secretary to the persident after you left. We were married at his home. A very charming girl, indeed, he said. Extremely pretty and of quite exceptional intelligence. 1914. French. I puzzled my memory to explain why, in my university days, he had been repellant to me, despite my admiration and after some effort I recalled that I had been set against him by the young woman who later became my wife. She had heard of some dissecting orgies in which he had displayed unnecessary cruelty toward dogs and cats he was cutting up for the instruction of a private coterie of his students. I had expressed horror to a number of my companions and the criticism got about until it reached his ears. A few days later, for my humiliation, he had lectured scathingly upon a class of Americans who were members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. He was unusually sarcastic and scored some points that made me writhe and that brought tears to the eyes of Miss Hughes. There was no open break between us, but I decided that I did not like him and from that time on he treated me with studious coldness. FAR. Baumann was of a decisive, perhaps I might say staccato, personality. Extremely vain, he had been fond of impressing us with his mordant, sinister wit when he was professor of experimental psychology one of the kaisers exchange professors, by the way. I might have warmed to him at his kindly words had not my memory reverted to the university days and suddenly chilled me. Not that I remembered much to his discredit, but somehow he never had seemed of the kind Ameri-can- . that appealed to a red-bloode- d He had brought with him from the German universities a character and learning more or less familiar to to all of us now, but much of a myss tery in those days. We admired him immensely. I suppose that there is always the spirit of rebellion in youth against established tradition. We admired him excessively when he was in his most iconoclastic moods. He was brilliant and sardonic when attacking some accepted canon of religion, ethics or social "D UT now other prisoners. arrived two days later at an internment camp for officers not WE far from Munich. My name had been registered; I had been closely questioned and was about to be led away to my quarters when a familiar figure dawned upon my vision. Profesor Rudolph Baumann was quite formal and correct in his first greetings, for he was the commandant of the camp, but later he appeared anxious to place himself on terms of familiarity with me. You have been back to the university a number of times, I suppose? he said to me one evening. It was in Only once, I replied. that we met in such ferent circumstances he usage. In the light of what we know now about the false pretense that passed for education behind the four walls of the Teutonic temple he was simply exthe theories that pounding parrot-lik- e had been evolved to develop the g dynasty into a world-dominatin- power. His insistence that wherever Teutonic blood was most prevalent there would be found the best of civilization and Kultur, a superiority which was to rule the world, impressed us as original and even eccentric, but it was supported by such a wealth of illustration and by such but brilliant theorizing that we found the recurrent topic no less than alluring. far-fetche- By F. P. Gallagher less politely denounced Americans as crude and barbaric, but said, apparently by way of atonement, that it was better to be crude and barbaric than like the English and degenerate, Ho-henzolle- rn Shell shock, perhaps, Y F 7 d especially fond of literary He frequently pointed his morals by quotations from his favorite authors. I was struck then and often afterwards by his exceedingly limited acquaintance with, or rather I should say, appreciation of, modern literature. It was no accident that caused him to ignore consistently the authors who appealed to the American university folk. He looked with disdain upon Hawthorne, Poe, Tennyson, Browning, Kipling and Omar, though he sometimes quoted from Walt Whitman and Jack London. He was constantly illustrating his points with selections Treit-schkfrom Schopenhauer, Nietzschkne, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Heine, Ibsen, Strindberg and Bernard Shaw. I mention his literary prefrences as a clew to his character. He scoffed at sentimentality, covertly sneered at most of the things usually admired he more or by idealists and HE was -- e, dif-- . appear- ed willing to forget; almost eager to cultivate my good will. This was especially strange in view of the authority he had, as commandant of the prison, over me. Yet he went out of his way to be considerate of me while at the same time acting with almost ostentatious severity toward many of the other prisoners. I had been interned about two months when a letter arrived from my wife. He brought it to me himself. The writing is familiar, he said with a smile, scanning the address. I have an excellent memory. I took the envelope eagerly, saying, It is from my wife. I noted that it had been opened by more than one censor. Although brief, it put me in a high humor, for it assured me that all was going well, that my wife was in good health, that my little girl of three was turning out to be as I knew she would a raving beauty, and that the funds in the bank were still intact. I was so excited and happy that I talked with Dr. Baumann about my affairs and he listened with a patience a and acknowledgment smiling which, in the retrospect, I considered quite extraordinary. He even urged me on with questions about the child and about my financial arrangements. He seemed to be humoring me in my somewhat childish prattle as if he were striving to make my internment as easy for me as possible. I realized the situation and felt for him a glow of gratitude. was toward midsummer that Dr. Baumann himself brought me another letter. He was smiling as if he anticipated my happiness when I IT should open it. As he was about to retire I asked him to remain. Somehow the first words awoke in me a nervous fury and I rushed through the letter almost without reading it as its terror struck at me from sentence to sentence like an angry serpent. It blurred into black and I sank into a chair. The doctor revealed his concern in anxious inquiries, but I could do no more than thrust the letter into his hands. He read it with much care and then returned it, shaking his head sadly. When I was more comit and tried to realize posed I d the sorrow it had thrust into my life. Our home had been burned and my little girl had perished in the flames. For days afterward I appreciated the professors sympathy, and the more because it was unspoken. He broke the rules of the camp to send me a number of delicacies and evidently had given instructions that made my comings and goings less involved in the meshes of camp discip-- , line. My growing nervousness ill fitted me to battle with an sorrow in idleness, for there was little to do. Books were a torture; games and theatricals a bore. And there was no work. A few weeks later another blow fell. The failure of a bank swept away a few thousand dollars I had deposited to the account of my wife, a nest-eg- g I had hoped would suffice, eked out by part of my pay ,to make her life pleasant until my return. I mentioned the misfortune to Dr. Baumann and he was all sympathy. In early September a terrible dagger-thrust to the heart reduced me to a mental and moral wreck. I look back on that era as the most re-rea- ever-prese- nt soul-rackin- g, mind-sappin- g nerve-agonizin- g, pe- riod of my life. 'C' OLLOWING the failure of the hank I- my wife had taken her old position as secretary to the president of the university, but with a new president In my university days he had been a young professor. Dr. Baumann and I had sometimes alluded to his fondness for Betty. In fact, as the saying goes, I had cut him out.- He had been subjected to a certain amount of student ridicule, which was as unnecessary as it was cruel, I had thought at the time. But I had never conceived of him' - as an lie had appeared to me a rather prosaic don. To hear that he had but I shall be brief. My wife had killed him. He had attacked her and she had shot him. She was in jail. The trial had been held The jury had disagreed. She could not endure it. She believed herself arch-villai- n. dying. And how was I to endure it? My nerves were gone. I was in a state of mental depression so unutterably be- yond anything that a healthy man can imagine that I mention it without hope of being able to impart its torture or its deliriums. (Concluded Next Week.) 1 |