sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was
standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the
German Language. I was so impressed with this, that
sometimes when she began to empty one of these sen-
tences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of
reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had
been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had ex-
actly the German way; whatever was in her mind to
be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or
a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it
into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary
German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are
going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of
his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.