CHAPTER XVII 
MARK TWAIN 
VERY soon after my arrival in Berlin in 1894, I 
received an interesting and quaint letter from Herr 
Dr. Ortmann, the evangelical pastor at Ilsenburg in 
the Harz. My predecessor, Dr. Stuckenberg, had 
shown him much kindness by sending him American 
tourists for their summer holiday. As paying guests 
in his parsonage they had been financially helpful to 
him, and as the stipend of a German pastor in a 
country town is never too generous, he had come to 
depend on this source of revenue. The letter had a 
doleful wail running through it, as he feared that, 
with the change of pastorate, he would become for- 
gotten and unknown. His letter was filled with a 
certain love of America that was at least uncommon 
in one who had never been beyond the borders of 
his own beloved Fatherland. Shortly after this he 
came to call upon me, and in the course of our 
interview he described a celebration of the Fourth 
of July which he had inaugurated for his American 
guests. He described their setting out from Ilsen- 
burg; each one carried an American flag, and ample 
provision had been made for their material wants 
according to the never-failing custom of Germans. 
Nor did they omit a generous supply of fireworks 
that the celebration might be * echt amerikanisch.” 
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