had noted this
complexion of mood and mind and understood that that I would
I could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might
_nor_ could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantage
turned to the desired _would_, and so I pray you mercy of my fault,
and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good
my master and most dear lord."

I couldn't make it all out--that is, the details--but I got the
general idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. It was not
fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the
untutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because she
couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best
drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't
fetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we meandered
pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse
together, and better friends than ever.

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.

We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a most
strange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be,
to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous
with vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expression
of complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's pride
to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister
him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day
long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims
and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;
i