Letters to His Friends | Page 6

of the Semitic languages.
To H. M. S.
'Habkern: July 1890.
'A few days after I got to Switzerland, by dint of incessant inquiries and correspondence I found out the name of a pastor who lived in a sufficiently healthy place and who talked German. So I girded up my loins and went to visit him. "Sprechen Sie Englisch, mein Herr?" I asked. "Nein" was the reply. As I scarcely knew a word of German I was in a considerable fix. But I found out that the Pfarrer spoke "Lateinisch" and could read English a little when it was written. So I went up to his study and we got paper and pencil and began. I tried to tell him in a mixture of broken English and dog-Latin that I intended to give him the honour of my company. He said he would be pleased to take me "en pension." He then {15} asked how much I wished to pay. I hadn't for the life of me an idea of what I ought to pay. "Ut tibi optimum videtur," I said. But he made me fix my price. Then, when I had fixed it, I had to turn it into Swiss money. The good Pfarrer was so pleased with the honour of my company that he took me for less than I asked. Our greatest difficulty next arose: How was my luggage to be conveyed the five miles from the nearest town up a steep hill? Latin, French, English, German, failed to make me understand the situation. At last I took in the Pfarrer's meaning. I was to send it by the milkman after leaving it at a certain hotel. "Ja," I cried in an ecstasy of joy, at last grasping his meaning, "Ja, ich mittam der Gep?ck von der milkman." I arrived the next day. I found the Pfarrer knew Latin, Greek (but he pronounces both quite differently from me), German, French, Russian, Syriac, Hebrew, and a little English. His usual custom is to address me in German. If I fail to understand, he tries Latin and intersperses his remarks with Greek and Hebrew. So my great difficulty is first of all to find out what language he thinks he is speaking in.
'Yesterday we were sitting, smoking and drinking, in the village "Wirthshaus" among the natives of the place, the Pfarrer addressing me in Latin, the villagers staring at his learning in adoration and astonishment, and laughing at my attempts at German. The landlord came up to me when I arrived and sent in a bottle of wine for me, refusing to be paid for it, for he said that the natives of Interlaken fleeced the English; but when Habkern was for once honoured by the {16} presence of one, the people were not going to treat him in the same way.
'It is curious how the Pfarrer goes and sits and drinks and gossips in the "Wirthshaus," even on Sunday, I think. Last Sunday they had a country dance, and very curious and pretty was the scene--the old-fashioned wooden room--the odd national dress of the women--the curiously cut brown clothes of the men--the thick boots--the fiddlers raised above the rest--the quaint urn with its inscriptions above--the gaping crowd of villagers. Then the church is strange--very rude and simple, all whitewashed. The women sit on one side, the men on the other. They stand to pray and hear the text, and sit to sing and hear the sermon. The organ and font are placed at one end. The elders stand below the organ, the Pfarrer is lost in the far distance, right up in a big pulpit. The "Predigt" or sermon is everything. They have one written prayer before and one after the "Predigt." The people never say "Amen" or anything--only sing. They sing so slowly that, although I had only been with the Pfarrer three days, I could almost sing and look out the words in the dictionary at the same time! I talk German with every one who will talk with me. So well did I spin yarns when I had been in the country three or four days, that with a mixture of Latin and German I managed to make a German use strong language at some of my tales, which he was pleased to think were not exactly true. Reflecting on the situation afterwards, I remembered that I had told him, among other things, that I had walked nearly fifty "stunden" {17} in a day. His language was awful. I found afterwards that "stunde" was not, as I had supposed, an English "mile," but an English "hour." But I keep on talking. I have come to the conclusion that the way to learn a language is to argue in it. Accordingly I do so. I have tried to convince