The reading matter is compressed into two hundred and five small
pica lines, and is lighted up with eight pica head-lines. The bill of fare
is as follows: First, under a pica head-line, to enforce attention and
respect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that,
although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs of heaven ;
and that "When they depart from earth they soar to heaven." Per
haps a four-line sermon in a Saturday paper is the sufficient German
equivalent of the eight or ten columns of sermons which the New
A Tramp Abroad 317
Vorkers get in their Monday morning papers. The latest news (two
days old) follows the four-line sermon, under the pica head-line "Tele
grams," these are " telegraphed" with a pair of scissors out of the
Augsburger Zeitung of the day before. These telegrams consist of
fourteen and two-thirds lines from Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and
two and five-eighths lines from Calcutta. Thirty-three small pica lines
of telegraphic news in a daily journal in a King s Capital of 170,000
inhabitants is surely not an overdose. Next we have the pica heading,
" News of the Day," under which the following facts are set forth:
Prince Leopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines j Prince Arnulph
is coming back from Russia, two lines ; the Landtag will meet at ten
o clock in the morning and consider an election law, three lines and one
word over ; a city government item, five and one-half lines ; prices of
tickets to the proposed grand Charity Ball, twenty-three lines, for
this one item occupies almost one- fourth of the entire first page ; there
is to be a wonderful Wagner concert in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, with
an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments, seven and one-half
lines. That concludes the first page. Eighty-five lines, altogether, on
that page, including three headlines. About fifty of those lines, as one
perceives, deal with local matters ; so the reporters are not overworked.
Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with an opera crit
icism, fifty-three lines (three of them being headlines), and "Death
Notices," ten lines.
The other half of the second page is made up of two paragraphs
under the head of " Miscellaneous News." One of these paragraphs
tells about a quarrel between the Czar of Russia and his eldest son,
twenty-one and a half lines ; and the other tells about the atrocious
destruction of a peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth of
the total of the reading matter contained in the paper.
Consider what a fifth part of the reading matter of an American
daily paper issued in a city of 1 70,000 inhabitants amounts to ! Think
what a mass it is. Would any one suppose I could so snugly tuck away
such a mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult to find it
again if the reader lo?* his place? Surely not. I will translate that
child murder word for word, to give the reader a realizing sense of what
a fifth part of the reading matter of a Munich daily actually is when it
ponies under measurement of the eye :
"From Oberkreuzberg, January 21, the Donau Zeitung receives a
ng account of a crime, which we shorten as follows : In Rametuach,
21**
318 A Tramp Abroad
a village near Eppenschlag, lived a young married couple with two chil
dren, one of which, a boy aged five, was born three years before the
marriage. For this reason, and also because a relative at Iggensbach
had bequeathed M4OO ($100) to the boy, the heartless father consid
ered him in the way ; so the unnatural parents determined to sacrifice
him in the crudest possible manner. They proceeded to starve him
slowly to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him, as the village
people now make known, when it is too late. The boy was shut up in
a hole, and when people passed by he cried, and implored them to give
him bread. His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed him
at last, on the third of January. The sudden {sic) death of the child
created suspicion, the more so as the body was immediately clothed and
, aid upon the bier. Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest
was held on the 6th. What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then ! The
body was a complete skeleton. The stomach and intestines were utterly
empty ; they contained nothing whatever. The flesh on the corpse was
not as thick as the back of a knife, and incisions in it brought not a
drop of blood. There was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar
on the whole body ; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored extravasated
blood, everywhere, even on the soles of the feet there were wounds.
The cruel parents asserted that the boy had been so bad that they had
been obliged to use severe punishments, and that he finally fell over a
bench and broke his neck. However, they were arrested two weeks
after the inquest and put in the prison at Deggendorf."
Yes, they were arrested "two weeks after the inquest." What a
home sound that has. That kind of police briskness rather more re
minds me of my native land than German journalism does.
I think a German daily journal doesn t do any good to speak of, but
at the same time it doesn t do any harm. That is a very large merit,
and should not be lightly weighed nor lightly thought of.
The German humorous papers are beautifully printed upon fine paper,
and the illustrations are finely drawn, finely engraved, and are not vap
idly funny, but deliciously so. So also, generally speaking, are the two
or three terse sentences which accompany the pictures. I remember
one of these pictures : A most dilapidated tramp is ruefully contem
plating some coins which lie in his open palm. He says: "Well, beg
ging is getting played out. Only about five marks ($1.25) for the whole
day ; many an official makes more ! " And I call to mind a picture of a
commercial traveler who is about to unroll his samples:
A Tramp Abroad 319
Merchant (pettishly). No, don t. I don t want to buy anything!
Drummer. If you please, I was only going to show you
Merchant. But I don t wish to see them !
Drummer (after a pause, pleadingly ), But do you mind letting
me look at them 1 I haven t seen them for three weeks 1
"bo
*
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BERKELEY LIBRARIES