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put them on shipboard, and transport them to delightful places of this great inland sea, famed

in story.

Just prior to the World War, Lanny Budd, a small boy traveling on a train, had met a Jewish

salesman of electrical gadgets; they had liked each other, and the stranger had given Lanny his

card. This small object had lain in a bureau drawer; and if, later on, Lanny hadn't happened

to be rummaging in that drawer, how much would have been different in his life! He

wouldn't have written to Johannes Robin, and Johannes wouldn't have come to call on him in

Paris, and met Lanny's father, and with the father's money become one of the richest men in

Germany. Lanny's half-sister wouldn't have met Hansi Robin, and shocked her family by

marrying a Jewish musician. The yacht wouldn't have been called the Bessie Budd, and wouldn't

have taken Lanny and his family on three cruises, and been the means of Lanny and Irma's

getting married in a hurry. They mightn't have got married at all, and there wouldn't have

been any honeymoon cruise to New York, or any Baby Frances, or any floating dairy farm! In

short, if that business card, "Johannes Robin, Agent, Maatschappij voor Electrische

Specialiteiten, Rotterdam," had stayed covered up by Lanny Budd's neckties and handkerchiefs

most of Lanny's life would have been missing!

VI

Two happy members of the prosperous classes welcoming five of their intimate friends on the

platform of a railroad station. Everybody there knew who the Budds were, and knew that when

they hugged and kissed people, and laughed and chatted with them gaily, the people must be

wealthy and famous like themselves. A pleasant thing to have friends whom you can love and

appreciate, and who will love and appreciate you. Pleasant also to have villas and motorcars and

yachts; but many people do not have them, and do not have many dear friends. They know

themselves to be dull and undistinguished, and feel themselves to be lonely; they stand and watch

with a sad envy the behavior of the fortunate classes on those few occasions when they

condescend to manifest their feelings in public.

Johannes Robin was the perfect picture of a man who has known how to make use of his

opportunities in this world. His black overcoat of the finest cloth lined with silk; his black

Homburg hat; his neatly trimmed little black mustache and imperial; his fine leather traveling-

bags with many labels; his manner of quiet self-possession; his voice that seemed to be caressing

you—everything about him was exactly right. He had sought the best of both body and mind

and knew how to present it to the rest of the world. You would never hear him say: "Look at

what I, Johannes Robin, have achieved!" No, he would say: "What an extraordinary civilization,

in which a child who sat on the mud floor of a hut in a ghetto and recited ancient Hebrew texts

while scratching his flea-bites has been able in forty years to make so much money!" He

would add: "I'm not sure that I'm making the best use of it. What do you think?" That

flattered you subtly.

As for Mama Robin, there wasn't much you could do for her in the way of elegance. You

could employ the most skillful couturier and give him carte blanche as to price, but Leah, wife of

Jascha Rabinowich, would remain a Yiddishe mother, now a grandmother; a bit dumpier every

year, and with no improvement in her accent, whether it was Dutch or German or English she

was speaking. All she had was kindness and devotion, and if that wasn't enough you would

move on to some other part of the room.

The modern practice of easy divorces and remarriages makes complications for genealogists.

Lanny had grown tired of explaining about his two half-sisters, and had taken to calling them

sisters, and letting people figure it out. The name of Marceline Detaze made it plain that she was

the daughter of the painter who had been killed in the last months of the war; also it was possible

to guess that Bessie Budd Robin was the daughter of Lanny's father in New England. On that

stern and rock-bound coast her ancestors had won a hard and honest living; so Bess was tall

and her features were thin and had conscientiousness written all over them. Her straight

brown hair was bobbed, and she wore the simplest clothes which the style- makers would allow

to come into the shops. She was twenty-two and had been married four years, but had put off

having children because of her determination to play accompaniments for Hansi in exactly the

way he wanted them.

Very touching to see how she watched every step he took, and managed him exactly as her

mother at home managed a household. She carried his violin case and wouldn't let him pick up

a suitcase; those delicate yet powerful fingers must be devoted to the stopping of violin strings

or the drawing of a bow. Hansi was a piece of tone-producing machinery; when they went on tour