A Frenchman in America: Recollections of Men and Things

by Max O'Rell

A GERMAN TRAGEDY.

Like Milwaukee, Cincinnati possesses a very strong German element. Indeed a whole part of the city is entirely inhabited by a German population, and situated on one side of the water. When you cross the bridge in its direction, you are going “over the Rhine,” to use the local expression. “To go over the Rhine” of an evening means to go to one of the many German Brauerei, and have sausages and Bavarian beer for supper.

The town is a very prosperous one. The Germans in America are liked for their steadiness and industry. An American friend even told me that the Germans were perhaps the best patriots the United States could boast of.

Patriots! The word sounded strangely to my ears. I may be prejudiced, but I call a good patriot a man who loves his own mother country. You may like the land of your adoption, but you love the land of your birth. Good patriots! I call a good brother a man who loves his sister, not other people’s sisters.

The Germans apply for their naturalization papers the day after they have landed. I should admire their patriotism much more if they waited a little longer before they changed their own mother for a step-mother.

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March 8.

I witnessed a most impressive ceremony this morning, the funeral of the American Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin, whose body was brought from Germany to his native place a few days ago. No soldiers ordered to accompany the cortège, no uniforms, but thousands of people voluntarily doing honor to the remains of a talented and respected fellow-citizen and townsman: a truly republican ceremony in its simplicity and earnestness.

The coffin was taken to the Music Hall, a new and beautiful building capable of accommodating thousands of people, and placed on the platform amid evergreens and the Stars and Stripes. In a few minutes, the hall, decorated with taste but with appropriate simplicity, was packed from floor to ceiling. Some notables and friends of the late Minister sat on the platform around the coffin, and the mayor, in the name of the inhabitants of the city, delivered a speech, a eulogistic funeral oration, on the deceased diplomatist. All parties were represented in the hall, Republicans and Democrats alike had come. America admits no party feeling, no recollection of political differences, to intrude upon the homage she gratefully renders to the memory of her illustrious dead.

The mayor’s speech, listened to by the crowd in respectful silence, was much like all the speeches delivered on such occasions, including the indispensable sentence that “he knew he could safely affirm that the deceased had never made any enemies.” When I hear a man spoken of, after his death, as never having made any enemies, as a Christian I admire him, but I also come to the conclusion that he must have been a very insignificant member of the community. But the phrase, I should remember, is a mere piece of flattery to the dead, in a country where death puts a stop to all enmity, political enmity especially. The same would be done in England, and almost everywhere. Not in France, however, where the dead continue to have implacable enemies for many years after they have left the lists.