People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1893 — Ponderous German Humor. [ARTICLE]

Ponderous German Humor.

The slowness of the German savant to comprehend the quibs and turns of American humor are traditional, but, according to Rev. Dr. Griffis, a company of them were put to the test once by an American consul stationed in a German city. The consul, to prove the truth of the tradition, read to them Mark Twain’s declaration that, not possible to raise watermelons in the vicinity of a theological seminary.” The Germans, pressed to explain the meaning of that, were only able to reply that they could not see why the watermelons would not grow “if the seeds were healthy, the soil rich and the seminary buildings did not shade the melon patch." There is the same ponderosity about German humor that characterizes their philosophy and literature. What the scalpel cannot be applied to is likely to escape them. A chimney-piece carved from wood over six thousand years old has recently been erected in a house in Edinburg. The wood —an oak tree—was found in a sand pit at Musselburg, thirteen feet below the surface.