A Tramp Abroad — Volume 07

by Mark Twain

  (TRANSLATION.) "R. Diergandt--for Love--4 days." Many people in thisworld have caught it heavier than for the same indiscretion.

  This one is terse. I translate:

  "Four weeks for MISINTERPRETED GALLANTRY." I wish the sufferer hadexplained a little more fully. A four-week term is a rather seriousmatter.

  There were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls, to a certainunpopular dignitary. One sufferer had got three days for not salutinghim. Another had "here two days slept and three nights lain awake,"on account of this same "Dr. K." In one place was a picture of Dr. K.hanging on a gallows.

  Here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time by alteringthe records left by predecessors. Leaving the name standing, and thedate and length of the captivity, they had erased the description of themisdemeanor, and written in its place, in staring capitals, "FOR THEFT!"or "FOR MURDER!" or some other gaudy crime. In one place, all by itself,stood this blood-curdling word:

  "Rache!" [1]

  1. "Revenge!"

  There was no name signed, and no date. It was an inscription wellcalculated to pique curiosity. One would greatly like to know the natureof the wrong that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted,and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not. But there was no wayof finding out these things.

  Occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark, "II days, fordisturbing the peace," and without comment upon the justice or injusticeof the sentence.

  In one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the green capcorps with a bottle of champagne in each hand; and below was the legend:"These make an evil fate endurable."

  There were two prison cells, and neither had space left on walls orceiling for another name or portrait or picture. The inside surfaces ofthe two doors were completely covered with CARTES DE VISITE of formerprisoners, ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt andinjury by glass.

  I very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which the prisoners hadspent so many years in ornamenting with their pocket-knives, but redtape was in the way. The custodian could not sell one without anorder from a superior; and that superior would have to get it from HISsuperior; and this one would have to get it from a higher one--and so onup and up until the faculty should sit on the matter and deliver finaljudgment. The system was right, and nobody could find fault with it; butit did not seem justifiable to bother so many people, so I proceeded nofurther. It might have cost me more than I could afford, anyway; forone of those prison tables, which was at the time in a private museumin Heidelberg, was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fiftydollars. It was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar andhalf, before the captive students began their work on it. Persons whosaw it at the auction said it was so curiously and wonderfully carvedthat it was worth the money that was paid for it.

  Among them many who have tasted the college prison's dreary hospitalitywas a lively young fellow from one of the Southern states of America,whose first year's experience of German university life was ratherpeculiar. The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name on thecollege books, and was so elated with the fact that his dearest hopehad found fruition and he was actually a student of the old and renowneduniversity, that he set to work that very night to celebrate the eventby a grand lark in company with some other students. In the course ofhis lark he managed to make a wide breach in one of the university'smost stringent laws. Sequel: before noon, next day, he was in thecollege prison--booked for three months. The twelve long weeks draggedslowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last. A great crowd ofsympathizing fellow-students received him with a rousing demonstrationas he came forth, and of course there was another grand lark--in thecourse of which he managed to make a wide breach of the CITY'S moststringent laws. Sequel: before noon, next day, he was safe in the citylockup--booked for three months. This second tedious captivity drew toan end in the course of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizingfellow students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth; buthis delight in his freedom was so boundless that he could not proceedsoberly and calmly, but must go hopping and skipping and jumping downthe sleety street from sheer excess of joy. Sequel: he slipped and brokehis leg, and actually lay in the hospital during the next three months!

  When he at last became a free man again, he said he believed he wouldhunt up a brisker seat of learning; the Heidelberg lectures mightbe good, but the opportunities of attending them were too rare, theeducational process too slow; he said he had come to Europe with theidea that the acquirement of an education was only a matter of time,but if he had averaged the Heidelberg system correctly, it was rather amatter of eternity.

  APPENDIX D.

  The Awful German Language

  A little learning makes the whole world kin. --Proverbs xxxii, 7.

  I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in HeidelbergCastle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spokeentirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I hadtalked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; andwanted to add it to his museum.

  If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would alsohave known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I hadbeen hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, andalthough we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under greatdifficulty 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 aperplexing 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 thinkshe has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amidthe general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns overthe page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the followingEXCEPTIONS." He runs his eye down and finds that there are moreexceptions 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 oneof these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seeminglyinsignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed withan awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from underme. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird--(it is alwaysinquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody):"Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question--according to thebook--is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account ofthe rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick tothe book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. Ibegin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. Isay to myself, "REGEN (rain) is masculine--or maybe it is feminine--orpossibly neuter--it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, itis 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 theinterest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it ismasculine. Very well--then THE rain is DER Regen, if it is simply inthe quiescent state of being MENTIONED, without enlargement ordiscussion--Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kindof a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it isDOING SOMETHING--that is, RESTING (which is one of the German grammar'sideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dativecase, and makes it DEM Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but isdoing something ACTIVELY,--it is falling--to interfere with the bird,likely--and this indicates MOVEMENT, which has the effect of sliding itinto the Accusative case and changing DEM Regen into DEN Regen."Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answerup confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in theblacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen." Then the teacher letsme softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" dropsinto a sentence, it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case
,regardless of consequences--and therefore this bird stayed in theblacksmith shop "wegen DES Regens."

  N.B.--I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there wasan "exception" which permits one to say "wegen DEN Regen" in certainpeculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is notextended to anything BUT rain.

  There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An averagesentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity;it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts ofspeech--not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compoundwords constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found inany dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one, without jointor seam--that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteendifferent subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with hereand there extra parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all theparentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a coupleof king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of themajestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line ofit--AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out for the first time whatthe man has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way ofornament, as far as I can make out--the writer shovels in "HABEN SINDGEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," or words to that effect, and themonument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in thenature of the flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty.German books are easy enough to read when you hold them beforethe looking-glass or stand on your head--so as to reverse theconstruction--but I think that to learn to read and understand a Germannewspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to aforeigner.

  Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of theParenthesis distemper--though they are usually so mild as to cover onlya few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb itcarries some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember agood deal of what has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popularand excellent German novel--with a slight parenthesis in it. I will makea perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks andsome hyphens for the assistance of the reader--though in the originalthere are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left toflounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:

  "But when he, upon the street, the(in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)government counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1]

  1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehuelltenjetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten Regierungsrathinbegegnet.

  That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt. And thatsentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observehow far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in aGerman newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; andI have heard that sometimes after stringing along the excitingpreliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurryand 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 seecases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is themark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereaswith the Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced penand of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fogwhich stands for clearness among these people. For surely it is NOTclearness--it necessarily can't be clearness. Even a jury would havepenetration enough to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a gooddeal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts outto say that a man met a counselor's wife in the street, and then rightin the midst of this so simple undertaking halts these approachingpeople and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory of thewoman's dress. That is manifestly absurd. It reminds a person of thosedentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth bytaking a grip on it with the forceps, and then stand there anddrawl 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 bysplitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning ofan exciting chapter and the OTHER HALF at the end of it. Can any oneconceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called"separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over withseparable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them arespread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with hisperformance. A favorite one is REISTE AB--which means departed. Here isan example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:

  "The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother andsisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who,dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the amplefolds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, stillpale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing tolay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom sheloved more dearly than life itself, PARTED."

  However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One issure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and willnot be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrifyit. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in thislanguage, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound,SIE, 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 ofa language which has to make one word do the work of six--and a poorlittle weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think ofthe exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker istrying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me, Igenerally try to kill him, if a stranger.

  Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would havebeen an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of thislanguage complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak of our "goodfriend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one formand have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the Germantongue 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 alldeclined out of it. It is as bad as Latin. He says, for instance:

  SINGULAR

  Nominative--Mein gutER Freund, my good friend. Genitives--MeinES GutENFreundES, of my good friend. Dative--MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my goodfriend. Accusative--MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend.

  PLURAL

  N.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends. G.--MeinER gutEN FreundE,of my good friends. D.--MeinEN gutEN FreundEN, to my good friends.A.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, 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 friendsin Germany than take all this trouble about them. I have shown what abother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a thirdof the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjectiveto be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when theobject is neuter. Now there are more adjectives in this language thanthere are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be aselaborately declined as the examples above suggested.Difficult?--troublesome?--these words cannot describe it. I heard aCalifornian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, thathe would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

  The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure incomplicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one iscasually referring to a house, HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog, HUND,he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring tothem in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary E andspells them HAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE. So, as an added E often signifies theplural, as the S does with us, the new student is likely to go on for amonth making twins out of a Dative dog before he discov
ers 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, becausehe ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he reallysupposed 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 forrecovery could not lie.

  In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a goodidea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous fromits lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea,because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun theminute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistakethe name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal oftime trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always domean something, and this helps to deceive the student. I translated apassage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke looseand utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I wasgirding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in thisinstance was a man's name.

  Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in thedistribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and byheart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like amemorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and whatcallous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print--I translatethis from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-schoolbooks:

  "Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

  "Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.