A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

would keep her word!” “Blessed be her sacred name!”

said the old scholar, with emotion. The crowd roared,

“Huzza, huzza, huzza–at him again, Green-patch!”

“Going–going–”

“TEN thousand!” As Givenaught shouted this, his excitement

was so great that he forgot himself and used his

natural voice. He brother recognized it, and muttered,

under cover of the storm of cheers–

“Aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? Take

the books, I know what you’ll do with them!”

So saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was

at an end. Givenaught shouldered his way to Hildegarde,

whispered a word in her ear, and then he also vanished.

The old scholar and his daughter embraced, and the former said,

“Truly the Holy Mother has done more than she promised,

child, for she has give you a splendid marriage portion–

think of it, two thousand pieces of gold!”

“And more still,” cried Hildegarde, “for she has give

you back your books; the stranger whispered me that he

would none of them–‘the honored son of Germany must

keep them,’ so he said. I would I might have asked

his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing;

but he was Our Lady’s angel, and it is not meet that we

of earth should venture speech with them that dwell above.”

APPENDIX F

German Journals

The daily journals of Hamburg, Frankfort, Baden, Munich,

and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan.

I speak of these because I am more familiar with them

than with any other German papers. They contain no

“editorials” whatever; no “personals”–and this is rather

a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column;

no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings

of higher courts; no information about prize-fights

or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines,

yachting-contents, rifle-matches, or other sporting

matters of any sort; no reports of banquet speeches;

no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact

and gossip; no “rumors” about anything or anybody;

no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody;

no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference

to such things; no abuse of public officials, big or little,

or complaints against them, or praises of them; no religious

columns Saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons Mondays;

no “weather indications”; no “local item” unveiling of

what is happening in town–nothing of a local nature,

indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince,

or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body.

After so formidable a list of what one can’t find

in a German daily, the question may well be asked,

What CAN be found in it? It is easily answered: A child’s

handful of telegrams, mainly about European national and

international political movements; letter-correspondence about

the same things; market reports. There you have it.

That is what a German daily is made of. A German

daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the

inventions of man. Our own dailies infuriate the reader,

pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him.

Once a week the German daily of the highest class lightens

up its heavy columns–that is, it thinks it lightens

them up–with a profound, an abysmal, book criticism;

a criticism which carries you down, down, down into

the scientific bowels of the subject–for the German

critic is nothing if not scientific–and when you come

up at last and scent the fresh air and see the bonny

daylight once more, you resolve without a dissenting voice

that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up

a German daily. Sometimes, in place of the criticism,

the first-class daily gives you what it thinks is a gay

and chipper essay–about ancient Grecian funeral customs,

or the ancient Egyptian method of tarring a mummy,

or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples

who existed before the flood did not approve of cats.

These are not unpleasant subjects; they are not

uninteresting subjects; they are even exciting subjects–

until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them.

He soon convinces you that even these matters can

be handled in such a way as to make a person low-spirited.

As I have said, the average German daily is made up