there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader
is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he
can

"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-
now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)
government counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1]

1.　Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide
　　gehu"llten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode
　　gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet.　

That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt.　
And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved
German model.　You observe how far that verb is from
the reader's base of operations; well, in a German
newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page;
and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the
exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two,
they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting
to the verb at all.　Of course, then, the reader is left
in a very exhausted and ignorant state.　

We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one
may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers
but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed
writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans
it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen
and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual
fog which stands for clearness among these people.　

a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that.　
But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing
which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.　
This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me,
I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.　

Now observe the Adjective.　Here was a case where simplicity
would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason,
the inventor of this language complicated it all he could.　
When we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends,"
in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have
no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German
tongue it is different.　When a German gets his hands
on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining
it until the common sense is all declined out of it.　
It is as bad as Latin.　He says, for instance

SINGULAR

Dative

Accusative

PLURAL

to my good friends.　A.

Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize
those variations, and see how soon he will be elected.　
One might better go without friends in Germany than take
all this trouble about them.　I have shown what a bother
it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is
only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new
distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object
is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter.　
Now there are more adjectives in this language than there
are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as
elaborately declined as the examples above suggested.　

I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of
his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks
than one German adjective.　

The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure
in complicating it in every way he could think of.　
For instance, if one is casually referring to a house,
HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog, HUND, he spells these
words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them
in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary
E and spells them HAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE.　So, as an added
E often signifies the plural, as the S does with us,
the new student is likely to go on for a month making
twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake;
and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill
afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only
got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog
in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was

of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore
a suit for recovery could not lie.　

In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter.　
Now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language,
is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness.　I consider
this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason
of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute
you see it.　You fall into error occasionally, because you
mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing,
and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning
out of it.　German names almost always do mean something,
and this helps to deceive the student.　I translated
a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress
broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest"
(Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this,
I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a
man's name.　

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system
in the distribution; so the gender of each must be
learned separately and by heart.　There is no other way.　
To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book.
In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.　
Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip,
and what callous disrespect for the girl.　See how it

in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books

"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.　

"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English
maiden?

Wilhelm.　It has gone to the opera."

To continue with the German gendersa tree is male, its buds
are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless,