A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

managed to understand Mr. X’s next remark puzzled me.

I will insert it, presently. X turned away a moment,

and I asked the mariner if he could not find a board,

and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the

purest German, but I might as well have spoken in the

purest Choctaw for all the good it did. The man tried

his best to understand me; he tried, and kept on trying,

harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use,

and said:

“There, don’t strain yourself–it is of no consequence.”

Then X turned to him and crisply said:

“MACHEN SIE a flat board.”

I wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man

did not answer up at once, and say he would go and borrow

a board as soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling.

We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have

to go. I have given Mr. X’s two remarks just as he made them.

Four of the five words in the first one were English,

and that they were also German was only accidental,

not intentional; three out of the five words in the second

remark were English, and English only, and the two German

ones did not mean anything in particular, in such a connection.

X always spoke English to Germans, but his plan was

to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down,

according to German construction, and sprinkle in a German

word without any essential meaning to it, here and there,

by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood.

He could make those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand

him, sometimes, when even young Z had failed with them;

and young Z was a pretty good German scholar. For one thing,

X always spoke with such confidence–perhaps that helped.

And possibly the raftsmen’s dialect was what is called

PLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar

to their ears than another man’s German. Quite indifferent

students of German can read Fritz Reuter’s charming

platt-Deutch tales with some little facility because many

of the words are English. I suppose this is the tongue

which our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them.

By and by I will inquire of some other philologist.

However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men

employed to calk the raft had found that the leak was not

a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs–a crack

that belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been

magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of

the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a good degree

of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident.

As we swam smoothly along between the enchanting shores,

we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs

in Germany and elsewhere.

As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us,

by observing and noting and inquiring, diligently and day

by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opulent

stock of misinformation. But this is not surprising;

it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country.

For example, I had the idea once, in Heidelberg,

to find out all about those five student-corps. I started

with the White Cap corps. I began to inquire of this

and that and the other citizen, and here is what I found

out:

1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none

but Prussians are admitted to it.

2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason.

It has simply pleased each corps to name itself after

some German state.

3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only

the White Cap Corps.

4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth.

5. Any student can belong to it who is European by birth.

6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he

be a Frenchman.

7. Any student can belong to it, no matter where he

was born.

8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood.

9. No student can belong to it who cannot show three full