These may suffice as examples of the average comic force of the German joke. A very few of the above—perhaps four or five in all—might have been accepted by the editors of Punch, with the requisite changes of scene and dialect. We must also bear in mind that the dialect counts for much in a comic scene, as we can easily perceive by changing a Yorkshire bumpkin's language in a comedy into London English. Half of the laugh-compelling power of some of the specimens given may lie in peculiarities of dialect and grammar of which no one but a native of the country can feel the force. A few of the more vivid and telling examples are given in the accompanying illustrations.
The glimpses of German life which the comic artists afford remind us that the children of men are of one family, the several branches of which do not differ from one another so much as we are apt to suppose. German fathers, too, as we see in these pictures, stand amazed at the quantity of property their daughters can carry about with them in the form of wearing apparel. A domestic scene exhibits a young lady putting the last fond touches to her toilet, while a clerk presents a long bill to the father of the family, who throws his hands aloft, and exclaims, "Oh, blessed God! Thou who clothest the lilies of the field, provide also for my daughter, at least during the Carnival!"
Strict Discipline in the Field—Major going the Rounds at Night.
Sentinel. "Who goes there? Halt!" (Major, not regarding the summons, the soldier fires, and misses.)
Major. "Three days in the guard-house for your bad shooting."
Germany, not less than England and America, laughs at "the modern mother," who dawdles over Goethe, and is "literary," and wears eyeglasses, while delegating to bottles and goats her peculiar duties. An extravagant burlesque of this form of self-indulgence presents to view a baby lying on its back upon a centre-table, its head upon a pillow, taking nourishment direct from a goat standing over it; the mother sitting near in a luxurious chair, reading. Enter the family doctor, who cries, aghast, "Why, what's this, baroness? I did not mean it in that way! A she-goat is not a wet-nurse." To which the baroness languidly replies, looking from her book, "Why not?"
And here is the German version of Punch's widely disseminated joke upon marriage: "If you are going to be married, my son, I will give you some good advice." "And what is it?" "Better not."
The Woman's Rights agitation gave rise to burlesques precisely similar in inane extravagance to those which appeared in England, America, and France. We have the "Students of the Future," a series representing buxom lasses in dashing bloomers, smoking, dissecting, fighting duels, and hunting. The young lady who has on her dissecting-table a bearded "subject" is leaning against it nonchalantly, drinking a pot of beer, and another young lady is using the pointed heel of her fashionable boot as a tobacco-stopper. Here, too, is the husband who comes home late, and whose wife will sit up for him.