Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National Policy.Various
History
Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National Policy.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Indeed, there is nothing strange about this, unless it be that any one
should deem himself quite above the class of blunders which he
satirizes. It is less to be wondered at that one should continue to hurl
his satiric javelins at those who commit the same class of errors with
himself, since he seldom becomes aware of his own ridiculous mistakes.
In regard to Germany, our people know but its grand divisions and its
large cities; and of its people among us but their exterior
distinctions, and mainly those offered to the eye, arrest attention. We
meet them as servants or employés in kitchens, shops, and gardens, and
on farms, or as neighbors, competitors, or associates in business. At
evening we separate, and they go to their own domestic or social
circles, where alone the native character speaks itself freely forth in
the native language and dialect. There only the homebred wit and humor
freely flow and flash. There the half-forgotten legends and
superstitions, the utterance of which to other ears than those of their
own people is forbidden--perhaps by a slight sense of shame, perhaps by
the utter failure of language,--together with the pastimes and
adventures of their native villages or districts, are arrested in their
rapid progress to oblivion, as they are occasionally called forth to
amuse the dull hours or lighten the heavy ones of a home-sick life in a
foreign land. Could we but half enter into the hearts of the peasant
Germans who move among us, and are by some regarded as scarcely raised
in refinement and sensibility above the rank of the more polished
domestic animals of our own great and enlightened land, we should often
find them replete with the choicest elements of the truly epic, the
comic, and the tragic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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