A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifully

than her neighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn in the

east to the Wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires

glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods.

The WLGW was very severe; our sleeping-place could

hardly be DISTINGUEE’ from the snow around it, which had

fallen to a depth of a FLIRK during the past evening,

and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble EN BAS to the

Giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate.

At noon the day before Grindelwald the thermometer could

not have stood at less than 100 degrees Fahr. in the sun;

and in the evening, judging from the icicles formed,

and the state of the windows, there must have been at least

twelve DINGBLATTER of frost, thus giving a change of 80

degrees during a few hours.

I said:

“You have done well, Harris; this report is concise,

compact, well expressed; the language is crisp,

the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly elaborated;

your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly

to business, and doesn’t fool around. It is in many

ways an excellent document. But it has a fault–it

is too learned, it is much too learned. What is ‘DINGBLATTER’?

“‘DINGBLATTER’ is a Fiji word meaning ‘degrees.'”

“You knew the English of it, then?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What is ‘GNILLIC’?

“That is the Eskimo term for ‘snow.'”

“So you knew the English for that, too?”

“Why, certainly.”

“What does ‘MMBGLX’ stand for?”

“That is Zulu for ‘pedestrian.'”

“‘While the form of the Wellhorn looking down upon it

completes the enchanting BOPPLE.’ What is ‘BOPPLE’?”

“‘Picture.’ It’s Choctaw.”

“What is ‘SCHNAWP’?”

“‘Valley.’ That is Choctaw, also.”

“What is ‘BOLWOGGOLY’?”

“That is Chinese for ‘hill.'”

“‘KAHKAHPONEEKA’?”

“‘Ascent.’ Choctaw.”

“‘But we were again overtaken by bad HOGGLEBUMGULLUP.’

What does ‘HOGGLEBUMGULLUP’ mean?”

“That is Chinese for ‘weather.'”

“Is ‘HOGGLEBUMGULLUP’ better than the English word? Is

it any more descriptive?”

“No, it means just the same.”

“And ‘DINGBLATTER’ and ‘GNILLIC,’ and ‘BOPPLE,’

and ‘SCHNAWP’–are they better than the English words?”

“No, they mean just what the English ones do.”

“Then why do you use them? Why have you used all this

Chinese and Choctaw and Zulu rubbish?”

“Because I didn’t know any French but two or three words,

and I didn’t know any Latin or Greek at all.”

“That is nothing. Why should you want to use foreign words,

anyhow?”

“They adorn my page. They all do it.”

“Who is ‘all’?”

“Everybody. Everybody that writes elegantly. Anybody has

a right to that wants to.”

“I think you are mistaken.” I then proceeded in the following

scathing manner. “When really learned men write books

for other learned men to read, they are justified in using

as many learned words as they please–their audience

will understand them; but a man who writes a book for the

general public to read is not justified in disfiguring

his pages with untranslated foreign expressions.

It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers,

for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying,

‘Get the translations made yourself if you want them,

this book is not written for the ignorant classes.’ There are

men who know a foreign language so well and have used it

so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole

volleys of it into their English writings unconsciously,

and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time.

That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the

man’s readers. What is the excuse for this? The writer

would say he only uses the foreign language where the

delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English.

Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man,

and he ought to warn the nine other not to buy his book.

However, the excuse he offers is at least an excuse;

but there is another set of men who are like YOU;

they know a WORD here and there, of a foreign language,

or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from

the back of the Dictionary, and these are continually

peppering into their literature, with a pretense of