The young man in
charge was of the German student type, and his face flushed with
enthusiasm as he led the children singing one of Koerner's poems.
The newspaperman, who did not understand German, asked me what
abominable stuff they were singing, but he seemed dissatisfied
with my translation of the simple words and darkly intimated that
they were "deep ones," and had probably "fooled" me. When I
replied that Koerner was an ardent German poet whose songs
inspired his countrymen to resist the aggressions of Napoleon,
and that his bound poems were found in the most respectable
libraries, he looked at me rather askance and I then and there
had my first intimation that to treat a Chicago man, who is
called an anarchist, as you would treat any other citizen, is to
lay yourself open to deep suspicion.
Another Sunday afternoon in the early spring, on the way to a
Bohemian mission in the carriage of one of its founders, we
passed a fine old house standing well back from the street,
surrounded on three sides by a broad piazza, which was supported
by wooden pillars of exceptionally pure Corinthian design and
proportion. I was so attracted by the house that I set forth to
visit it the very next day, but though I searched for it then and
for several days after, I could not find it, and at length I most
reluctantly gave up the search.
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