ight have thought the affair unreasonable but not
necessarily vicious--it would be easy enough to avoid talking about
a hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the
Germans picked out _a_ and _the_ and many other little words in use all
the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected Ramsey
Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last crotchety
detail, with "When to employ Which" as a nausea to prepare for the
final convulsion when one _didn't_ use Which, because it was an
"Exception"--there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that was
merely hellish.

The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over and
over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always had a
glow when she said this. At such times the children looked patient; they
supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and their teacher; and
they believed her with the same manner of believing which those of them
who went to Sunday-school used there when the Sunday-school teachers
were pushed into explanations of various matters set forth in the Old
Testament, or gave reckless descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the
children did not challenge or deny; already they had been driven into
habits of resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is
able to reject adult nonsense.

Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a
collection of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was full of
revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often necessitated
the employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely mastered
knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him there was something faintly
but constantly antagonistic to it--yet, when the teacher declared that
German was incomparably the most beautiful language in the world, one of
the many facets of his mind submissively absorbed the statement as light
to be passed inward; it was part of the lesson to be learned. He did not
know whether the English language was beautiful or not; he never thought
about that, and no one ever said anything to him about it. Moreover,
though his deeper inward hated "German," he liked his German teacher,
and it was pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face.

Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when
she would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany: what a
beautiful, good country it was, so tri