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 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 mean
time. 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, clothed 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 no 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 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