[THE GERMANS AND MUSIC.]
TO make a good German, four things are requisite, viz: Music, beer, Rhine wine and Gemuethlichkeit. In regard to the first and last qualities, I think that I am half a German. For four days past, I have been trying to achieve the other two qualities, and thus Teutonize myself in toto.
I have fought the white beer of Berlin with an energy worthy of a better cause. I have wrestled with the red beer of Chicago. I have struggled with Hocheimer, Rudesheimer and Johannisberg, until I was Black, White and Red in the face, and hung out the German flag in my countenance. I have wished, with Mein Herr Von Dunk, that my trough was as deep as the rolling Zuyder Zee. But when I had accomplished my fifth glass of the mantling beer with internal satisfaction, and then beheld a German friend call for his thirtieth, just by way of an appetizer for the half barrel he had ordered, I saw at once the futility of my undertaking.
In fact, I was not equal to the beer capacity of a small German baby, and when I saw great, jolly Teutons, flaxen-haired, deep-lunged and stout-handed, with a whole case of Rhenish hidden away under their jackets, is it proper for me to allude to the poor little bottle of Steinberger I had demolished, or to have any other feeling in regard to that feat than one of intense mortification? The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. Nature was against me.
On the tenth glass of beer, the German is serene; on the twentieth, he is philosophical and will discuss the problem of how many angels can stand upon the point of a needle; on the thirtieth, he is full of Bruderlichkeit; on the fortieth, he reaches Freiheit; on the fiftieth, he will troll you a Trinklied in the manner of Hermanns with his Golden Calf; on the sixtieth he is a little weary, but his heart is in the right place, and he pronounces zwei glass with a strong emphasis on the zwei; on the seventieth, he is tired, but he recovers from it with the eightieth; on the ninetieth, he feels gut; and on the hundredth he is himself again, frisch, frei und froh, and is then prepared to drink some beer with you, to sing you one of Abt's best, to criticise a statue, or discuss the everlasting essence of the negative pole of infinity. Set him down to the glorious Rhenish vintages and the pile of old bottles he will leave behind him would have gone a great ways towards building the tower of Babel.
Your German is essentially a talker, and it is astonishing, considering the "schs," and "achs," and "ichs," and other gutturals distressing to an American windpipe, which are continually in his way, how much ground he will talk over in an hour. He talks with his tongue, his arms and his legs, and throws in the punctuation points as he goes along, with nods of his head. When he is the most social and affectionate, when his heart warms towards you, then he appears as if he were immediately about to demolish you, and the more affectionate he grows, the more alarmed you become for your personal safety and anxious to inform your family that you may be brought home feet foremost. A company of Germans together, when they are inspired with Gemuethlichkeit, and when social feeling is at its highest temperature, exactly resemble Americans at the other extreme, preparing for a general fight, and you wonder the police do not interfere. And vice versa, when the German is excited to pugnacity, he does not seem to be excited at all. He appears to be serene, but beneath all the calm outside there is a terrible rage.