A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

is the sufficient German equivalent of the eight or ten

columns of sermons which the New-Yorkers get in their

Monday morning papers. The latest news (two days old)

follows the four-line sermon, under the pica headline

“Telegrams”–these are “telegraphed” with a pair of

scissors out of the AUGSBURGER ZEITUNG of the day before.

These telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds lines

from Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and two and five-eights

lines from Calcutta. Thirty-three small-pica lines news

in a daily journal in a King’s Capital of one hundred and

seventy thousand inhabitants is surely not an overdose.

Next we have the pica heading, “News of the Day,”

under which the following facts are set forth: Prince

Leopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines;

Prince Arnulph is coming back from Russia, two lines;

the Landtag will meet at ten o’clock in the morning and

consider an election law, three lines and one word over;

a city government item, five and one-half lines;

prices of tickets to the proposed grand Charity Ball,

twenty-three lines–for this one item occupies almost

one-fourth of the entire first page; there is to be

a wonderful Wagner concert in Frankfurt-on-the-Main,

with an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments,

seven and one-half lines. That concludes the first page.

Eighty-five lines, altogether, on that page,

including three headlines. About fifty of those lines,

as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters

are not overworked.

Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with

an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them

being headlines), and “Death Notices,” ten lines.

The other half of the second page is made up of two

paragraphs under the head of “Miscellaneous News.”

One of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the Czar

of Russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines;

and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a

peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth

of the total of the reading-matter contained in the paper.

Consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an American

daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy

thousand inhabitants amounts to! Think what a mass it is.

Would any one suppose I could so snugly tuck away such a

mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult

to find it again in the reader lost his place? Surely not.

I will translate that child-murder word for word,

to give the reader a realizing sense of what a fifth

part of the reading-matter of a Munich daily actually

is when it comes under measurement of the eye:

“From Oberkreuzberg, January 21st, the DONAU ZEITUNG

receives a long account of a crime, which we shortened

as follows: In Rametuach, a village near Eppenschlag,

lived a young married couple with two children, one of which,

a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage.

For this reason, and also because a relative at Iggensbach

had bequeathed M400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless

father considered him in the way; so the unnatural

parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest

possible manner. They proceeded to starve him slowly

to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him–as the

village people now make known, when it is too late.

The boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed

by he cried, and implored them to give him bread.

His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed

him at last, on the third of January. The sudden (sic)

death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the

body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier.

Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held

on the 6th. What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then!

The body was a complete skeleton. The stomach and intestines

were utterly empty; they contained nothing whatsoever.

The flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the back of

a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood.

There was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar

on the whole body; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored

extravasated blood, everywhere–even on the soles of

the feet there were wounds. The cruel parents asserted