Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 09:39:13 -0300
----------------------------------------------------------
verbs. The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; andthe wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better theauthor of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one isREISTE AB -- which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from anovel and reduced to English:monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature ofthe flourish to a mans signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German booksare easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or standto a position where it may be easily seen with the naked eye.district courts, was in town yesterday, the new form put it thus: Clerk of To Buenos Ayres, then. He did not even attempt to pronounce this name, though its strange, inexplicable look on the page was a joy to him. From there by mule-back and afoot over the Andes to Chile. He knew something about that trip. A woman who had taught in the Methodist missionary school in Santiago de Chile had taken that journey, and he had heard her give a lecture on it. He was the sexton of the church and heard all the lectures free. At Santiago de Chile (he pronounced it with a strange distortion of the schoolteachers bad accent) he would stay for a while and just live and decide what to do next. His head swam with dreams and visions, and his heart thumped heavily against his old ribs. The clock striking ten brought him back to reality. He stood up with a gesture of exultation almost fierce. Thats just the time when the train crosses the state line! he said. That evening, as he walked home after service, he told himself that he had never known so long a day. It seemed longer than all the rest of his life. Indeed he felt that some strange and racking change had come upon him since the morning, as though he were not the same person, as though he had been away on a long journey, and saw all things with changed eyes.
