Appendix D - Page 2

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 "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen." Then the teacher lets
me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" 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 "wegen DES Regens."

N.B.--I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was
an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen 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 of fourteen or fifteen
different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here
and there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally, all the
parentheses and reparentheses 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 "HABEN SIND
GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," 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