[1]. Sitten, like French mœurs and Latin mores, has the double meaning of “morals” and of “customs,” “manners.”—Translator.
[2]. La Dame blanche, opera by Adrien François Boïeldieu, composed in 1825. Theodor Formes died in 1874, at the age of forty-eight.—Translator.
[3]. From the word “Past!” on, these inscriptions are in English. Of course the fifteen-year-old German girl’s English is literally reproduced here; it is much better than most of our schoolgirls could do in German.—Translator.
[4]. Pseudonym of Anton Alexander Graf von Auersperg, a distinguished liberal Austrian epic and lyric poet, born 1806, died 1876.—Translator.
[5]. Born 1791, died 1872; published his last drama 1840; began to be very famous as a dramatist about 1850.—Translator.
[6]. Pseudonym of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau, born 1802, became insane 1844, died (in an asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna) 1850.—Translator.
[7]. Count Friedrich Heinrich Ernst von Wrangel, Prussian general, was born 1784, was made Field Marshal 1856, died 1877; commanded the troops of the Germanic Confederation against Denmark in 1848, and the allied troops of Prussia and Austria against Denmark in 1864, but withdrew from the command in May of the latter year. But Lieutenant Field Marshall Felix Ludwig Johann Friedrich von Schwarzenberg, Austrian statesman and general, died in 1852, before Wrangel received the title of Field Marshal. I infer from this, and from the following sentence, that these signatures did not constitute a single inscription.—Translator.
[8]. The joke is the same as in the story of the Englishman who mistook the American ambassador in his plain evening dress for a waiter, and gave him the order, “Call me a cab,” to which Ambassador Choate replied, “You’re a cab,” and afterwards defended himself by saying, “He asked me to call him a cab, and I did; and I would have called him a han’som’ cab if he hadn’t been so ugly.” But in English the troublesome words are a mere ambiguity; in German it is a case of erroneously using for the one sense the forms that properly convey the other sense, so that the interpretation which the father-in-law puts upon the suitor’s words, strained as it looks in the translation, is really the only interpretation which the words as spoken will bear.—Translator.
[9]. Observe that previous to 1870 it was patriotic, not unpatriotic, for a Bavarian to speak of an Austrian as a fellow-countryman. It is quite likely, however, that the land of Parnassus is here meant.—Translator.