THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
back. Nothing therefore stood in the way of Adam's return home, and I urged him to avail himself of this opportunity. Adam once more gave expression of his warm attachment to me, of the sincerity of which I certainly had no reason to doubt. But he recognized that my advice was good, and resolved without delay to return to his family in the Palatinate. I divided the money I had with him, and thus we parted with the sincerest emotion and with the promise occasionally to write to one another. Only when Adam was gone it occurred to me that I had never known his family name, so that my efforts to find him out remained unsuccessful. I could not write to him; and thus it happened, that, as he did not write to me, I have never heard from him again since that day of parting.
After having spent some hours in visiting the Strasburg Cathedral, Neustädter and I prepared for departure. We purchased alpaca dusters to conceal our military uniforms, and then took a railway train for Basel, which, however, we left at a way-station shortly before reaching the Swiss frontier. It was near evening. We went into a village near by and found a little tavern, through the open door of which we saw a woman busy at the cooking stove. We entered and asked for something to eat. In her Alsatian idiom, hard for us to understand, she promised us some ham and eggs. While she was preparing our meal a man entered, whom we took to be her husband and the landlord of the inn. As his face inspired confidence, I thought it best to acquaint him frankly with our situation, as well as with our wish to cross the frontier into Switzerland without meeting any official person who might demand a passport. Our host seemed to be highly interested, and showed a surprising familiarity with the bypaths and trails used by the smuggling fraternity on the Swiss frontier. We suspected
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