A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

excess of joy. Sequel: he slipped and broke his 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 would hunt up a brisker seat of learning; the Heidelberg

lectures might be good, but the opportunities of attending

them were too rare, the educational process too slow;

he said he had come to Europe with the idea that the

acquirement of an education was only a matter of time,

but if he had averaged the Heidelberg system correctly,

it was rather a matter 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 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 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