 I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested, and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a unique, and wanted to add it to his museum. If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the meantime. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is. Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way, and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions. He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again to hunt for another ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing cases where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, closed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird. It is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody. Where is the bird? Now, the answer to this question, according to the book, is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith's shop on account of the rain. Of course, no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, Regen, rain, is masculine, or maybe it is feminine, or possibly neuter. It is too much trouble to look now. Therefore it is either der, the, Regen, or die, the, Regen, or das, the, Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well, then, the rain is der, Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned without enlargement or discussion, nominative case. But if this rain is lying around in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located. It is doing something, that is resting, which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something. And this throws the rain into the dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively. It is falling, to interfere with the bird, likely. And this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen. Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently, and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop, Regen, on account of den Regen. Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word Regen drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the genitive case, regardless of consequences. And therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop Regen des Regens. NB. I was informed later, by a higher authority, that there was an exception, which permits one to say Regen den Regen in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain. There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity. It occupies a quarter of a column. It contains all the ten parts of speech, not in regular order, but mixed. It is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary. Six or seven words compacted into one without joint or seam, that is, without hyphens. It treats a fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens within pens. Finally all the parentheses and re-parentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence, and the other in the middle of the last line of it, after which comes the verb, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about. And after the verb, merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out, the writer shovels in... ...or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature, not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head, so as to reverse the construction, but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner. Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of the parenthesis distemper, though they are usually so mild as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your mind, because you are able to remember a good deal of what has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel, with a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation and throw in the parenthesis marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader, though in the original there are no parenthesis marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can. But when he, upon the street, the parenthesis, in satin and silk-covered now very unconstrained after the newest fashion-dressed closed parenthesis, government counsellor's wife met, etc., etc., footnote one, That is from the old Manzell's secret by Mrs. Marlott, and that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations. Well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page, and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parenthesis for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state. We have the parenthesis disease in our literature, too, and one may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers, but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people, for surely it is not clearness, it necessarily can't be clearness. Even a jury would have penetration enough to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a good deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts out to say that a man met a counsellor's wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this so simple undertaking halts these approaching people and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. That is manifestly absurd. It reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it with the forceps, and then stands there and draws through a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste. The Germans have another kind of parenthesis which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can anyone conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called separable verbs. The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs, and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favourite one is Reis da Ab, which means departed. Here is an example which I called from a novel and reduced to English. The trunks, being now ready, he dee, hyphen hyphen, after kissing his mother and sisters, are once more pressing to his bosom, his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white Muslim, with a single tube rose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him, whom she loved more dearly than life itself, parted. However, it is not well to dwell too much on these separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early, and if he sticks to the subject and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, ze, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six, and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says ze to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger. Now observe the adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage. Therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. When we wished to speak of our good friend, or friends, in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard feelings about it. But with a German tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands on an adjective he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it. It is as bad as Latin. He says, for instance, singular, nominative, mein guter freund accusative, mein guter freund, my good friends. Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go without friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother it is to decline a good male friend, while this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine and still another when the object is neuter. Now there are more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the examples above suggested. Difficult? Troublesome? These words cannot describe it. I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say in one of his calmest moods that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective. The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one is casually referring to a house, house, or a horse, Firth, or a dog, Hund, he spells these words as I have indicated. But if he is referring to them in the dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary E and spells them house. Firth, Hund. So as an added E often signifies the plural, as the S does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a dative dog before he discovers his mistake. And on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them because he ignorantly bought that dog in the dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural, which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie. In German, all the nouns begin with a capital letter. Now, that is a good idea, and a good idea in this language is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error occasionally because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this helps to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day which said that the infuriated Tigris broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fur forest, Tannenwald. When I was girding up my loins to doubt this I found out that Tannenwald, in this instance, was a man's name. Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution, so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum book. In German a young lady has no sex while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print. I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday school books. Gretchen. Realhelm, where is the turnip? Realhelm. She has gone to the kitchen. Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden? Realhelm. It has gone to the opera. To continue with the German genders, a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter, horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female. Tom-cats included, of course. A person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the words selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it. For in Germany all the women either wear male heads or sexless ones. A person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex, and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay. Now by the above dissection the reader will see that in Germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely he is bound to have his doubts. He finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture, and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with a thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land. In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language a woman is a female, but a wife, vibe, is not, which is unfortunate. A wife here has no sex, she is neuter, so according to the grammar a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fish wife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under description, that is bad enough, but over description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Englender. To change the sex he adds In, and that stands for Englishwoman, Englendering. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German, so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus. D. Englendering, which means the she-Englishwoman. I consider that that person is over-described. Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns he is still in a difficulty because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer to things as he and she and him and her, which it has been always accustomed to refer to as it. When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, with the hymns and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the utterance point, it is no use. The moment he begins to speak, his tongue flies the track, and all those labored males and females come out as its. And even when he is reading German to himself he always calls those things it, whereas he ought to read in this way. Tale of the fish-wife and its sad fate, note two. I capitalize the nouns in the German and ancient English fashion, end of note two. It is a bleak day. Here the rain, how he pours, and the hail, how he rattles, and see the snow, how he drifts along, and of the mud, how deep he is. Ah, the poor fish-wife. It is stuck fast in the mire. It has dropped its basket of fishes, and its hands have been cut by the scales as it sees some of the falling creatures. And one scale has even got into its eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its mouth to cry for help, but if any sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the storm. And now a tomcat has got one of the fishes, and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a fin. She holds her in her mouth. Will she swallow her? No, the fish-wife's brave mother dog deserts his puppies and rescues the fin, which he eats himself as his reward. Oh, horror! The lightning has struck the fish-basket. He sets him on fire. See the flame, how she licks the doomed utensil with her red and angry tongue. Now she attacks the helpless fish-wife's foot. She burns him up, all but the big toe, and even she is partly consumed. And still she spreads, still she waves her fiery tongues. She attacks the fish-wife's leg and destroys it. She attacks its hand and destroys her also. She attacks the fish-wife's leg and destroys her also. She attacks its body and consumes him. She reads herself about its heart and it is consumed. Next about its breast, and in a moment she is a cinder. Now she reaches its neck, he goes. Now it's chin, it goes. Now it's nose, he goes. In another moment, except help come, the fish-wife will be no more. Time presses. Is there none to suck her and save? Yes! Joy! Joy! With flying feet the she-English woman comes, but alas the generous she-female is too late. Where now is the fated fish-wife? It has ceased from its sufferings. It has gone to a better land. All that is left of it for its loved ones to lament over is this poor smoldering ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful ash-heap! Let us take him up tenderly, reverently upon the lowly shovel, and bear him to his long rest, with the prayer that when he rises again it will be a realm where he will have one good square responsible sex and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted sexes scattered all over him in spots. There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner. It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in the German. Now, there is that troublesome word vermelt. To me it has so close a resemblance, either real or fancied, to three or four other words that I never know whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married, until I look in the dictionary and then I find it means the latter. There are lots of such words, and they are a great torment. To increase the difficulty there are words which seem to resemble each other, and yet do not. But they make just as much trouble as if they did. For instance, there is the word vermitten, to let, to lease, to hire, and the word verheiretin, another way of saying to marry. I heard of an Englishman who knocked at a man's door in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best German he could command, to verheiretin that house. Then there are some words which mean one thing when you emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable. For instance, there is a word which means a runaway, or the act of glancing through a book, according to the placing of the emphasis, and another word which signifies to associate with a man or to avoid him, according to where you put the emphasis, and you can generally depend on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble. There are some exceedingly useful words in this language, schlach, for example, and zuge. There are three quarters of a column of schlachs in the dictionary, and a column and a half of zuge. The word schlach means blow, stroke, dash, hit, shock, clap, slap, time, bar, coin, stamp, kind, sort, manner, way, apoplexy, wood cutting, enclosure, field, forest clearing. This is its simple and exact meaning, that is to say it's restricted, its fettered meaning. But there are ways by which you can set it free so that it can soar away as on the wings of the morning, and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. You can begin with schlach adder, which means artery, and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word, clear through the alphabet to schlach vasser, which means bilge water, and including schlach mutter, which means mother-in-law. Just the same with zuge. Strictly speaking, zuge means pull, tug, draft, procession, march, progress, flight, direction, expedition, train, caravan, passage, stroke, touch, line, flourish, trait of character, feature, lineament, chess move, organ stop, team, whiff, bias, drawer, propensity, inhalation, disposition. But that thing which it does not mean, when all its legitimate penance have been hung on, has not been discovered yet. One cannot overestimate the usefulness of schlach and zuge. Armed with just these two, and the word alzo, what cannot the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German word alzo is the equivalent of the English phrase, you know, and does not mean anything at all in talk, though it sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens his mouth, an alzo falls out, and every time he shuts it, he bites one and two that was trying to get out. Now the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words, is master of the situation. Let him talk right along fearlessly. Let him pour his indifferent German forth, and when he lax for a word, let him heave a schlag into the vacuum. All the chances are that it fits like a plug. But if it doesn't, let him promptly heave a zuge after it. The two together can hardly fail to bung the hole. But if by a miracle they should fail, let him simply say alzo. And this will give him a moment's chance to think of the needful word. In Germany, when you load your conversational gun, it is always best to throw in a schlag or two, and a zuge or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the charge may scatter. You are bound to bag something with them. Then you blandly say alzo, and load up again. Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance and unconstraint to a German or an English conversation as to scatter it full of alzo's or you-knows. In my notebook I find this entry. In the hospital yesterday a word of thirteen syllables was successfully removed from a patient, a North German from near Hamburg, but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place under the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community. That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the most curious and notable features of my subject, the length of German words. Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these examples. These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions, and they are not rare. One can open a German newspaper at any time and see them marching majestically across the page, and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come across a good one I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought had an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt Brickabrack hunter. Of course, when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape, but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way. He cannot crawl under it or climb over it or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere, so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed. They are compound words with the hyphens left out. The various words used in building them are in the dictionary, but in a very scattered condition. So you can hunt the materials out one by one and get the meaning at last, but it is a tedious and harassing business. I have tried this process upon some of the above examples, seems to be friendship demonstrations, which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying demonstrations of friendship, seems to be independence declarations, which is no improvement upon declarations of independence so far as I can see. Seems to be general states' representatives' meetings, as nearly as I can get at it, a mere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for meetings of the legislature, I judge. We used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, but it has gone out now. We used to speak of a thing as a never-to-be-forgotten circumstance, instead of cramping it into the simple and sufficient word memorable, and then going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened. In those days we were not content to embalm the thing and bury it decently. We wanted to build a monument over it. But in our newspapers the compounding disease lingers a little to the present day, but with the hyphens left out in the German fashion. This is the shape it takes. Instead of saying, Mr. Simmons, clerk of the county and district courts, was in town yesterday, the new form puts it thus, clerk of the county and district courts, Simmons, was in town yesterday. This saves neither time nor ink and has an awkward sound besides. One often sees a remark like this in our papers. Mrs. Assistant District Attorney Johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season. That is a case of really unjustifiable compounding, because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers a title on Mrs. Johnson, which she has no right to. But these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted with the ponderous and dismal German system of piling jumbled compounds together. I wish to submit the following local item from a Mannheim Journal by way of illustration. In the day before yesterday, shortly after eleven o'clock night, the in this town-standing tavern called the Wagoner was down-burnt, when the fire to the on-the-down burning house-resting Stork's Nest reached, flew the parent Stork's away. But when the by-the-raging fire-surrounded nest itself caught fire, straightway plunged the quick returning mother-stork into the flames and died, her wings over her young ones outspread. Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to take the pathos out of that picture. Indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it. This item is dated away back yonder months ago. I could have used it sooner. But I was waiting to hear from the father-stork. I'm still waiting. Also, if I had not shown that the German is a difficult language, I have at least intended to do so. I have heard of an American student who was asked how he was getting along with his German, and who answered promptly, I am not getting along at all. I have worked at it hard for three-level months, and all I have got to show for it is one solitary German phrase, Zwei Glas, two glasses of beer. He paused for a moment, reflectively, then added with feeling, but I've got that, solid. And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely tried American student who used to fly to a certain German word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations no longer. The only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit. This was the word Dammet. It was only the sound that helped him not the meaning. Note three, it merely means, in its general sense, here with. End of note three. And so at last when he learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away and died. I think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English. Our descriptive words of this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion, howl, cry, shout, yell, groan, battle, hell. These are magnificent words. They have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe, but their German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleep with. Or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for display, and not for superior usefulness in analyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in a battle which was called by so tame a term as schlacht, or would not a consumptive feel too much bundled up, who was about to go out in a shirt-collar and a seal ring into a storm which the birdsong word Gevitter was employed to describe, and observe the strongest of the several German equivalents for explosion, Ausbruch. Our word toothbrush is more powerful than that. It seems to me that the Germans could do worse than import it into their language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with. The German word for hell, hella, sounds more like helly than anything else. Therefore, how necessarily chipper, frivolous and unimpressive it is. If a man were told in German to go there, could he really rise to the dignity of feeling insulted? Having pointed out in detail the several vices of this language, I now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. The capitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned, but far before this virtue stands another, that of spelling a word according to the sound of it. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how any German word is pronounced without having to ask. Whereas in our language, if a student should inquire of us, what does B-O-W spell? We should be obliged to reply. Nobody can tell what it spells when you set it off by itself, you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out what it signifies, whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a knot of one's head, or the forward end of a boat. There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful and affectionate home life, those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere, kindly feeling and honest goodwill toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship. Those which deal with outdoor nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects, with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights. In a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace. Those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland. And lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and effective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the sound of the words is correct, it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness, and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart. The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the right one. They repeat it several times if they choose. That is wise. But in English, when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological. And so we are weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only approximates exactness to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse. There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandly about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind of person. I have shown that the German language needs reforming. Very well. I am ready to reform it. At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions. Such a course as this might be immodest in another. But I have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere superficial culture could have conferred upon me. In the first place I would leave out the date of case. It confuses the plurals. And besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the date of case, except he discover it by accident, and then he does not know when or where it was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, or how he is ever going to get out of it again. The date of case is but an ornamental folly. It is better to discard it. In the next place I would move the verb further up to the front. You may load up with ever so good a verb, but I notice that you never really bring down a subject with it at the present German range. You only cripple it. So I insist that this important part of speech should be brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with a naked eye. Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue to swear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous way. Footnote four. Verdammt, and its variations and enlargements, are words which have plenty of meaning, but the sounds are so mild and ineffectual that German ladies can use them without sin. German ladies who could not be induced to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion promptly rip out one of these harmless little words when they tear their dresses or don't like the soup. It sounds about as wicked as our migratious. German ladies are constantly saying, Ach Gott, mein Gott, Gott in Heben, Herr Gott, der Herr Jesus, etc. They think our ladies have the same custom perhaps, for I once heard a gentle and lovely old German lady say to a sweet young American girl, The two languages are so alike, how pleasant that is. We say, Ach Gott, you say, God damn! End of footnote four. Fourthly, I would reorganize the sexes and distribute them accordingly to the will of the Creator. This is a tribute of respect, if nothing else. Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compound words, or require the speaker to deliver them in sections with intermissions for refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other. It is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not hang a string of those useless, haven-siend gevesen gehabt haben gevorden signs to the end of his oration. This sort of Gugos undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. They are, therefore, an offence, and should be discarded. Seventhly, I would discard the parenthesis. Also, the re-parenthesis, the re-re-parenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-re-parentheses, and likewise the final wide-reaching, all-en-closing king parenthesis. I would require every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain, straightforward tale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. Infractions of this law should be punishable with death. And eighthly and last, I would retain Tsuk and Schlag with their pendants and discard the rest of the vocabulary. This would simplify the language. I have now named what I regard as the most necessary and important changes. These are perhaps all I could be expected to name for nothing. But there are other suggestions which I can and will make in case my proposed application shall result in my being formally employed by the government in the work of reforming the language. My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English, barring spelling and pronouncing, in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it. A fourth of July oration in the German tongue delivered at a banquet of the Anglo-American club of students by the author of this book. Gentlemen, since I arrived a month ago in this old wonderland, this vast garden of Germany, my English tongue has so often proved a useless piece of baggage to me, and so troublesome to carry around in a country where they haven't the checking system for luggage, that I finally set to work and learned the German language. Also es freut mich, dass die so ist, denn es muss in ein hauptsächlich degree höflich sein, dass man auf ein occasion like this seine Rede in die Sprache des Landes worin he borts aussprechen soll. Dafür habe ich aus reinischer Verlegenheit no Vergangenheit. No, I mean höflichkeit. Aus reinischer Höflichkeit habe ich resolved to tackle this business in the German language um Gottes Willen. Also, Sie müssen so freundlich sein und verzei mich, the interlarding, von ein oder zwei englischer Worte, hier und da, denn ich finde, dass die Deutsche... He's not a very copious language, and so when you really got anything to say, you've got to draw on a language that can stand the strain. Wenn aber man kann nicht meine Rede verstehen, so werde ich ihm später dasselbe übersetzt, wenn er solche Dienst verlangen, wollen, haben, werden, sollen, sein, hätte. I don't know what... Wollen, haben, werden, sollen, sein, hätte. That means, but I notice they always put it at the end of a German sentence, merely for general literary gorgeousness, I suppose. This is a great and justly honored day, a day which is worthy of the veneration in which it is held by the true patriots of all climes and nationalities, a day which offers a fruitful theme for thought and speech. Und meine Freunde, no, meinen Freunden, mein Nessfreundes, well take your choice, they're all the same price. I don't know which one is right. Also, ich habe, gehabt, haben, würden gewesen sein, as Goethe says in his Paradise Lost, ich, ich, that is to say ich, but let us change cars. Also, die Anblick, so viele, Großbritannischer und Amerikanischer, hier zusammengetroffen, in Brüderliche Concorde, ist zwar A welcome and inspiring spectacle. And what has moved you to it? Can the terse German tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeugungen, Stadtverorteten Versammlungen, Familien-Eigentümlichkeiten? Nine, oh, nine. This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly meeting and produced in a foreign land and a far country. Ja, freilich, natürlich, wahrscheinlich, ebenso wohl. Also, die Aussicht auf dem Königsstuhl mehr größer ist, aber geistliche Sprechend nicht so schön, lob Gott, because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen, in Brüderlichen Concorde, ein großen Tag zu feiern. Whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality, but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands that know liberty today and love it. May this good fellowship endure. May these banners here blended in amity so remain. May they never any more wave over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood, which was kindred is kindred, and always will be kindred, until a line drawn upon a map shall be able to say, this bars the ancestral blood from flowing in the veins of the descendant. End of Section 54, Appendix D. This is Section 55 of A Tramp Abroad. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain, Section 55, Appendix E. Legend of the Castles. Called the Swallows Nest and the Brothers, as condensed from the Captain's Tale. In the neighborhood of three hundred years ago, the Swallows Nest and the larger castle between It and Neckar Steinach were owned and occupied by two old knights who were twin brothers and bachelors. They had no relatives, they were very rich. They had fought through the wars and retired to private life covered with honourable scars. They were honest, honourable men in their dealings, but the people had given them a couple of nicknames which were very suggestive. Hergivnaut and Herr Heartless. The old knights were so proud of these names that if a burger called them by their right ones they would correct them. The most renowned scholar in Europe at the time was the Herr Dr. Franz Reichmann, who lived in Heidelberg. All Germany was proud of the venerable scholar who lived in the simplest way, for great scholars are always poor. He was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet young daughter Hildegard and his library. He had been all his life collecting his library, book in book, and he lived it as a miser loves his hoarded gold. He said the two strings of his heart were rooted, the one in his daughter, the other in his books, and that if either were severed he must die. Now, in an evil hour, hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple old man had entrusted his small savings to a sharper to be ventured in a glittering speculation. But that was not the worst of it. He signed a paper, without reading it. That is the way with poets and scholars. They always signed without reading. This cunning paper made him responsible for heaps of things. The rest was that one night he found himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand pieces of gold, an amount so prodigious that it simply stupefied him to think of it. It was a night of woe in that house. I must part with my library. I have nothing else. So perishes one heart string, said the old man. What will it bring, father? asked the girl. Nothing. It is worth seven hundred pieces of gold. But by auction it will go for little or nothing. Then you will have parted with the half of your heart and the joy of your life to no purpose, since so mighty a burden of debt will remain behind. There is no help for it, my child. Our darlings must pass under the hammer. We must pay what we can. My father, I have a feeling that the dear virgin will come to our help. Let us not lose heart. She cannot devise a miracle that will turn nothing into eight thousand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring us little peace. She can do even greater things, my father. She will save us. I know she will. Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep in his chair, where he had been sitting before his books, as one who watches by his beloved dead and prints the features on his memory for a solace in the after-time of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room and gently woke him, saying, My presentiment was true. She will save us. Three times has she appeared to me in my dreams and said, Go to her, give not. Go to her, heartless. Ask them to come and bid. There did I not tell you she would save us, the thrice-blessed virgin. Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh. Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles stand upon, as to the harder ones that lie in those men's breasts, my child. They bid on books writh in the learned tongues. They can scarce read their own. But Hildegard's faith was in no wise shaken. Bright and early she was on her way up the Neckar Road, as joyous as a bird. Meantime, Her Give-not and Her Heartless were having an early breakfast in the former's castle, the Sparrow's Nest, and flavoring it with a quarrel. For although these twins bore a love for each other, which almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they could not touch without calling each other hard names, and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon. I tell you, said Give-not, you will beggar yourself yet with your insane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects. All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish custom and husband your means, but all in vain. You are always lying to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed to deceive me yet. Every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet, I have detected your hand in it, incorrigible ass. Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, you mean. Where I give one unfortunate, a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen. The idea of your swelling around the country and petting yourself with the nickname of Give-not, intolerable humbug. Before I would be such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off. Your life is a continual lie. But go on, I have tried my best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous charities. Now, for the thousandth time, I wash my hands of the consequences. A maundering old fool, that's what you are. And you, a blathering old idiot, roared Give-not, springing up. I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than to call me such names, mannerless swine. So saying, hair heartless sprang up in a passion. But some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary daily living reconciliation. The gray-headed old eccentric's parted, and hair heartless walked off to his own castle. Half an hour later, Hildegard was standing in the presence of Hair Give-not. He heard her story and said, I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor. I care nothing for a bookish rubbish. I shall not be there. He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor Hildegard's heart, nevertheless. When she was gone, the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands. It was a good stroke. I have saved my brother's pocket this time, in spite of him. Nothing else would have prevented his rushing off to rescue the old scholar, the pride of Germany, from his trouble. The poor child won't venture near him after the rebuff she has received from his brother the Give-not. But he was mistaken. The virgin had commanded, and Hildegard would obey. She went to Hair Heartless and told her story. But he said coldly, I am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me. I wish you well, but I shall not come. When Hildegard was gone, he chuckled and said, How my fool of a soft-headed, soft-hearted brother would rage if he knew how cunningly I have saved his pocket! How he would have flown to the old man's rescue! But the girl won't venture near him now. When Hildegard reached home, her father asked her how she had prospered. She said, The virgin has promised, and she will keep her word, but not in the way I thought. She knows her own ways, and they are best. The old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting smile, but he honoured her for her brave faith nevertheless. Two. Next day the people assembled in the great hall of the Ritter Tavern to witness the auction, for the proprietor had said the treasurer of Germany's most honoured son should be bartered away in no meaner place. Hildegard and her father sat close to the books, silent and sorrowful, and holding each other's hands. There was a great crowd of people present. The bidding began. How much for this precious library, just as it stands, all complete, called the auctioneer? Fifty pieces of gold. A hundred, two hundred, three, four, five hundred, five twenty-five, a brief pause, five forty, a longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his persuasions, five forty-five. A heavy drag, the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded, implored. It was useless. Everybody remained silent. Well then, going, going, one, two, five hundred and fifty! This, in a shrill voice, from a bent old man, all hung with rags and with a green patch over his left eye. Everybody in his vicinity turned and gazed at him. It was give-naught in disguise. He was using a disguised voice, too. Good! cried the auctioneer. Going, going, one, two, five hundred and sixty! This, in a deep harsh voice, from the midst of the crowd at the other end of the room, the people nearby turned and saw an old man in a strange costume supporting himself on crutches. He wore a long white beard and blue spectacles. It was hair heartless in disguise, and using a disguised voice. Good again! Going, going, one, six hundred! Sensation! The crowd raised a cheer, and someone cried out, Go it, green patch! This tickled the audience, and a score of voices shouted, Go it, green patch! Going, going, going, third and last call, one, two, seven hundred! Huzzah! Well done, crutches! cried a voice. The crowd took it up and shouted altogether, Well done, crutches! Splendid gentlemen, you are doing magnificently. Going, going, a thousand! Three cheers for green patch, up and at him, crutches! Going, going, two thousand! And while the people cheered and shouted, crutches muttered, Who can this devil be that is fighting so to get these useless books? But no matter, he shan't have them. The pride of Germany shall have his books, if it beggars me to buy them for him. Going, going, going, three thousand! Come, everybody, give a rouser for green patch! And while they did it, green patch muttered, This cripple is plainly a lunatic, but the old scholar shall have his books, nevertheless, though my pockets sweat for it. Going, going, four thousand! Huzzah! Five thousand! Huzzah! Six thousand! Huzzah! Seven thousand! Huzzah! Eight thousand! We are saved, father. I told you the Holy Virgin would keep her word. Blessed be her sacred name, said the old scholar with emotion. The crowd roared. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! Had him again, green patch? Going, going, ten thousand! As Givnaught shouted this, his excitement was so great that he forgot himself and used his natural voice. His brother recognized it and muttered, under cover of the storm of cheers. Ah, ha! You are there, are you, besotted old fool! Take the books, I know what you'll do with them! So saying, he slipped out of the place, and the auction was at an end. Givnaught shouldered his way to Hildegard, whispered a word in her ear, and then he also vanished. The old scholar and his daughter embraced, and the former said, Truly the Holy Mother has done more than she promised, child, for she has given you a splendid marriage portion. Think of it, two thousand pieces of gold! And more still, cried Hildegard, for she has given you back your books. The stranger whispered me that he would none of them. The honoured son of Germany must keep them, so he said. I would I might have asked his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing. But he was our lady's angel, and it is not meat that we of earth should venture speech with them that dwell above. Section 56 Appendix F. German Journals The daily journals of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Baden, Moenig, and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan. I speak of these because I am more familiar with them than with any other German papers. They contain no editorials, whatever, no personals, and this is rather a merit than a demerit, perhaps. No funny paragraph column, no police court reports, no reports of proceedings of higher courts, no information about prize fights or other dogfights, horse races, walking machines, yachting contents, rifle matches, or other sporting matters of any sort, no reports of banquet speeches, no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact and gossip, no rumors about anything or anybody, no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody, no lists of patents granted or sought or any reference to such things, no abuse of public officials, big or little, or complaints against them or praises of them, no religious columns Saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons Mondays, no weather indications, no local item unveiling of what is happening in town, nothing of a local nature indeed is mentioned beyond the movements of some prince or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body. After so formidable a list of what one can't find in a German daily, the question may well be asked, what can be found in it? It is easily answered. A child's handful of telegrams, mainly about European national and international political movements, letter correspondence about the same things. Market reports. There you have it. That is what a German daily is made of. A German daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the inventions of man. Our own dailies infuriate the reader, pretty often. The German daily only stupefies him. Once a week the German daily of the highest class lightens up its heavy columns, that is, it thinks it lightens them up, with a profound, an abysmal book criticism. A criticism which carries you down, down and down, into the scientific bowels of the subject, for the German critic is nothing if not scientific, and when you come up at last, and scent the fresh air and see the bonny daylight once more, you resolve, without a dissenting voice, that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up a German daily. Sometimes, in place of the criticism, the first class daily gives you what it thinks is a gay and chipper essay about ancient Grecian funeral customs, or the ancient Egyptian method of tarring a mummy, or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples who existed before the flood did not approve of cats. These are not unpleasant subjects. They are not uninteresting subjects. They are even exciting subjects, until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them. He soon convinces you that even these matters can be handled in such a way as to make a person low-spirited. As I have said, the average German daily is made up solely of correspondences, a trifle of it by telegraph, the rest of it by mail. Every paragraph has the side-head London, Vienna, or some other town, and a date, and always before the name of the town is placed a letter or a sign to indicate who the correspondent is, so that the authorities can find him when they want to hang him—stars, crosses, triangles, squares, half-moons, suns, such are some of the signs used by correspondents. Some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly. For instance, my Heidelberg daily was always twenty-four hours old when it arrived at the hotel, but one of my moony evening papers used to come a full twenty-four hours before it was due. Some of the less important dailies give one a tablespoon of continued story every day. It is strung across the bottom of the page in the French fashion. By subscribing for the paper for five years I judge that a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story. If you ask a citizen of Mooneish, which is the best Mooneish daily journal, he will always tell you that there is only one good Mooneish daily, and that it is published in Augsburg forty or fifty miles away. It is like saying that the best daily paper in New York is published out in New Jersey somewhere. Yes, the Augsburg Algemeine Zeitung is the best Moonech paper, and it is the one I had in my mind when I was describing a first-class German daily above. The entire paper, opened out, is not quite as large as a single page of the New York Herald. It is printed on both sides, of course, but in such large type that its entire contents could be put in Herald type upon a single page of the Herald, and there would still be room enough on the page for the Zeitung's supplement and some portion of the Zeitung's next-days contents. Such is the first-class daily. The dailies actually printed in Moonech are all called second-class by the public. If you ask which is the best of these second-class papers, they say there is no difference. One is as good as another. I have preserved a copy of one of them. It is called the Munchener Tagus Anzeiger, and bears date January twenty-five, eighteen seventy-nine. Comparisons are odious, but they need not be malicious. And without any malice I wish to compare this journal, published in a German city of a hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, with journals of other countries. I know of no other way to enable the reader to size the thing. A column of an average daily paper in America contains from eighteen hundred to twenty-five hundred words. The reading matter in a single issue consists of from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand words. The reading matter in my copy of the Moonech journal consists of a total of one thousand six hundred and fifty-four words, for I counted them. That would be nearly a column of one of our dailies. A single issue of the bulkiest daily newspaper in the world, the London Times, often contains one hundred thousand words of reading matter. Considering that the daily Anzeiger issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading matter in a single number of the London Times would keep it in copy two months and a half. The Anzeiger is an eight-page paper. Its page is one inch wider and one inch longer than a full-scap page. That is to say, the dimensions of its page are somewhere between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady's pocket handkerchief. One fourth of the first page is taken up with the heading of the journal. This gives it a rather top heavy appearance. The rest of the first page is reading matter. All of the second page is reading matter. The other six pages are devoted to advertisements. The reading matter is compressed into two hundred and five small pika lines, and is lighted up with eight pika headlines. The bill of fair is as follows. First, under a pika headline to enforce attention and respect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that, although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs of heaven, and that, when they depart from earth, they soar to heaven. Perhaps a four-line sermon in a Saturday paper is the sufficient German equivalent of the eight or ten columns of sermons which the New Yorkers get in their Monday morning papers. The latest news, two days old, follows the four-line sermon under the pika headline Telegrams. These are telegraphed with a pair of scissors out of the Augsberger Zeitung of the day before. These telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds lines from Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and two and five eighths lines from Calcutta. Thirty-three small pika lines of telegraphic news in a daily journal in a king's capital of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants is surely not an overdose. Next we have the pika heading News of the Day, under which the following facts are set forth. Prince Leopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines. Prince Arnulf is coming back from Russia, two lines. The Langtag will meet at ten o'clock in the morning and consider an election law, three lines and one word over. A city government item, five and one half lines, prices of tickets to the proposed grand charity ball, twenty-three lines, for this one item occupies almost one fourth of the entire first page. There is to be a wonderful Wagner Concert in Frankfurt on the Main with an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments, seven and one half lines. That concludes the first page. Eighty-five lines altogether on that page, including three headlines. About fifty of those lines, as one perceives, deal with local matters, so the reporters are not overworked. Exactly one half of the second page is occupied with an opera criticism, fifty-three lines, three of them being headlines, and death notices, ten lines. The other half of the second page is made up of two paragraphs under the head of Miscellaneous News. One of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the Tsar of Russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines, and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth of the total of the reading matter contained in the paper. Consider what a fifth part of the reading matter of an American daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants amounts to. Think what a mass it is! Would anyone suppose I could so snugly tuck away such a mass, in a chapter of this book, that it would be difficult to find it again if the reader lost his place? Surely not! I will translate that child murder, word for word, to give the reader a realising sense of what a fifth part of the reading matter of a munish daily actually is when it comes under measurement of the eye. From Oberkreuzberg, January twenty-first, the Donautseitung receives a long account of a crime which we shortened as follows. In Raumetoch, a village near Appenschlag, lived a young married couple with two children, one of which, a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage. For this reason, and also because a relative at Egensbach had bequeathed M. 400, one hundred dollars, to the boy, the heartless father considered him in the way. So the unnatural parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest possible manner. They proceeded to starve him slowly to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him, as the village people now make known, when it is too late. The boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed by he cried, and implored them to give him bread. His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed him at last, on the third of January. The sudden, seek, death of the child, created suspicion, the more so as the body was immediately closed and laid upon the beer. Therefore the coroner gave notice, an inquest was held on the sixth. What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then. The body was a complete skeleton. The stomach and intestines were utterly empty. They contained nothing whatsoever. The flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the back of a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood. There was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar on the whole body. Wounds, scars, bruises, discolored, extravasated blood—everywhere, even on the soles of the feet there were wounds. The cruel parents asserted that the boy had been so bad that they had been obliged to use severe punishments, and that he finally fell over a bench and broke his neck. However, they were arrested two weeks after the inquest and put in the prison of Degendorf. Yes, they were arrested two weeks after the inquest. What a home sound that has! That kind of police briskness, rather, more reminds me of my native land than German journalism does. I think a German daily journal doesn't do any good to speak of, but at the same time it doesn't do any harm. That is a very large merit, and should not be lightly weighted, nor lightly thought of. The German humorous papers are beautifully printed upon fine paper, and the illustrations are finally drawn, finally engraved, and are not vapidly funny, but deliciously so. So also, generally speaking, are the two or three terse sentences which accompany the pictures. I remember one of these pictures. A most dilapidated tramp is ruefully contemplating some coins which lie in his open palm. He says, Well, Begging is getting played out, only about five marks, $1.25, for the whole day. Many an official makes more. And I call to mind a picture of a commercial traveller who is about to unroll his samples. Merchant, pettishly. No! Don't! I don't want to buy anything! Drummer, if you please! I was only going to show you, Merchant. But I don't wish to see them! Drummer, after a pause, pleadingly. But do you mind letting me look at them? I haven't seen them for three weeks!