With Major von Abercron for a mate he sailed from St.Louis in the great balloon race for the James Gordon Bennett Cup.

They came down in the Canadian woods and nearly died of hunger and exposure before they found a lumber camp.

Their balloon was called the Germania.

There was another civilian, a member of the German secret-service staff, wearing the Norfolk jacket and the green Alpine hat and on a cord about his neck the big gold token of authority which invariably mark a representative of this branch of the German espionage bureau; and he was wearing likewise that transparent air of mystery which seemed always to go with the followers of his ingenious profession.
During the evening the mayor of Maubeuge came, a bearded, melancholy gentleman, to confer with the commandant regarding a clash between a German under-officer and a household of his constituents.

Orderlies and attendants bustled in and out, and somebody played Viennese waltz songs on a piano, and altogether there was quite a gay little party in the parlor of this handsome house which the Germans had commandeered for the use of their garrison staff.
At early bedtime, when we stepped out of the door of the lit-up mansion into the street, it was as though we had stepped into a far-off country.
Except for the tramp of a sentry's hobbed boots over the sidewalks and the challenging call of another sentry round the corner the town was as silent as a town of tombs.