While reading poetry or prose, or while singing, fancy seeing in your mind's eye the ocean with its waters in commotion, either the open sea or the surf near the shore, and you will _feel every word you utter mingle with its waves. These pictures will never disturb your fancy, but will associate with it in perfect harmony._ Now substitute for the picture of the ocean and its tumult some rural picture, as of a field of grain or the branches of trees tossed by the wind, or the flow of a river, or even that of the sea itself when perfectly calm. Keep such picture before you exactly as you did that of the sea in commotion. While reading, speaking, or singing English you will not be able to _hold_ such picture; _it will soon disturb you, and to such an extent that you must cease thinking of it, or be obliged to stop your reading, singing, etc._ The impression made by the ocean, in fact, is so great that it dominates the _thought_ and the entire being of English-speaking people. This is the case to such an extent that if you continue to persistently _think_ of any other image than the ocean, even without uttering any sound whatever, it will so greatly perturb you that you will be unable to continue thinking at all. You may, on the other hand, continue to think for an indefinite period of the image of the ocean without experiencing any disturbance whatever. While the basic element of the English language is closely affiliated with the ocean, that of the _German language_ is affiliated with the _woods, and the blowing of the winds_. In their habitation in the forest, the wind made so deep an impression on the primeval inhabitants of Germany that you can feel its _soughing pervade all German diction_. If you are a German keep the picture of the woods before you and the soughing of the wind through the tree-tops, and it will harmonize with German thought and diction. Substitute a picture of the ocean for it, or almost any other picture, and you will not be able to vocally utter German thought, nor will you be able to continue thinking in the German language at all. In place of conjuring up these pictures in your mind's eye you can substitute _real_ pictures representing these scenes, and while contemplating them the effect will be the same. After pursuing the picture of the ocean for a while, say: "English;" after pursuing that of the woods, say: "Deutsch;" either will come quite naturally, but you cannot reverse them. If you attempt it, these words will not be forthcoming. While with English diction there is _a pause and then an emphasis_ as of the waves coming on and then breaking against the shore, so, with German diction, there is an _emphasis and then a pause_, as of the blowing of the wind succeeded by a calm. These, in a word, are the characteristic elements in the idiomatic expressions of these peoples; English idiomatic expression being _low succeeded by loud_; German, _loud succeeded by low_.