What in the world was the use of
having sixteen ways of doing a thing that could just as well be done in
one? If the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen
useless variations for infrequent words, such as _hippopotamus_, for
instance, Ramsey might 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.
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