A Tramp Abroad Part 48

Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis, the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing 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 _zug_ 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 p.r.o.nouncing) 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 da.s.s dies so ist, denn es muss, in ein hauptsachlich degree, hoflich sein, da.s.s man auf ein occasion like this, sein Rede in die Sprache des Landes worin he boards, aussprechen soll. Dafuer habe ich, aus reinische Verlegenheit--no, Vergangenheit--no, I mean Hoflichkeit--aus reinishe Hoflichkeit habe ich resolved to tackle this business in the German language, um Gottes willen! Also! Sie muessen so freundlich sein, und verzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwei Englischer Worte, hie und da, denn ich finde da.s.s die deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when you've really got anything to say, you've got to draw on a language that can stand the strain.

Wenn haber man kann nicht meinem Rede Verstehen, so werde ich ihm spater da.s.selbe uebersetz, wenn er solche Dienst verlangen wollen haben werden sollen sein hatte. (I don't know what wollen haben werden sollen sein hatte 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 meinem Freunde--no, mein_en_ Freund_en_--mein_es_ Freund_es_--well, take your choice, they're all the same price; I don't know which one is right--also! ich habe gehabt haben worden gewesen sein, as Goethe says in his Paradise Lost--ich--ich--that is to say--ich--but let us change cars.

Also! Die Anblich so viele Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer hier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome and inspiriting spectacle. And what has moved you to it? Can the terse German tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordnetenversammlungenfamilieneigenthumlichkeiten?

Nein, O nein! This is a crisp and n.o.ble word, but it fails to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly meeting and produced diese Anblick--eine Anblich welche ist gut zu sehen--gut fuer die Augen in a foreign land and a far country--eine Anblick solche als in die gewohnliche Heidelberger phrase nennt man ein "schones Aussicht!"

Ja, freilich naturlich wahrscheinlich ebensowohl! Also! Die Aussicht auf dem Koenigsstuhl mehr grosser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nicht so schon, lob' Gott! Because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen, in Bruderlichem concord, ein grossen Tag zu feirn, 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. Hundert Jahre vorueber, waren die Englander und die Amerikaner Feinde; aber heut sind sie herzlichen Freunde, Gott sei Dank! May this good-fellows.h.i.+p 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!"

APPENDIX E.

LEGEND OF THE CASTLES

Called the "Swallow's Nest" and "The Brothers," as Condensed from the Captain's Tale

In the neighborhood of three hundred years ago the Swallow's Nest and the larger castle between it and Neckarsteinach 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 honorable scars. They were honest, honorable men in their dealings, but the people had given them a couple of nicknames which were very suggestive--Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless. The old knights were so proud of these names that if a burgher called them by their right ones they would correct them.

The most renowned scholar in Europe, at the time, was the Herr Doctor Franz Reikmann, 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 Hildegarde and his library. He had been all his life collecting his library, book and book, and he lived it as a miser loves his h.o.a.rded 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 intrusted 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 sign 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 heartstring," 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 pa.s.s 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 aftertime 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 the Herr Givenaught, go to the Herr 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, my child. _They_ bid on books writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own."

But Hildegarde'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 Herr Givenaught and Herr 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 Givenaught, "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 a.s.s!"

"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 Givenaught--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 blethering old idiot!" roared Givenaught, 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, Herr Heartless sprang up in a pa.s.sion. 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 eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to his own castle.

Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence of Herr Givenaught. He heard her story, and said--

"I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor, I care nothing for bookish rubbish, I shall not be there."

He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor Hildegarde'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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 Givenaught."

But he was mistaken. The Virgin had commanded, and Hildegarde would obey. She went to Herr 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 Hildegarde 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 Hildegarde 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 honored her for her brave faith, nevertheless.

II

Next day the people a.s.sembled in the great hall of the Ritter tavern, to witness the auction--for the proprietor had said the treasure of Germany's most honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place.

Hildegarde 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.