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I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental 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 sentences 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 exactly 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. — Mark Twain, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
My mother: the worshiper of language
I know what old Samuel Clemens meant, as I was raised by just such a girl: German, thorough, and determined. She tells a story in a sort of slow, whip-stitch fashion, looping back around to make sure you’re still with her, picking up more threads as she goes; delighted to have imparted to you her take on things; pleased to have shared with you her light.
