'Tis I am Doctor Eisenbart,
From all the old cures I depart:
That blind men walk I do ordain,
And make the lame folks see again.
At Wimpfen my great skill's well known,
For at a birth there it was shown:
The infant's neck I chanced to snap—
The mother died too, by good hap.
In Potsdam I trepanned, of late,
The cook of Frederick called the Great:
I dug my axe into his head,
And now the poor old chap is dead.
The sexton's son at Diddledum
I gave ten pounds of opium:
He slept for years, through dry and wet:
His nap has not been finished yet.
At Prague, from one good wife alone,
I took ten wagon-loads of stone:
Beneath the last one she's immured:
It's certain now that she'll be cured.
This is the way that I can heal:
There's none that's better, I'll go bail.
I never fail, that's plain and flat:
I'll swear it by my doctor's hat!
A very common feature of most songs of this sort consists in the numerous queer and by no means euphonious exclamations with which they are liberally provided. These correspond, in some degree, to the choruses of "folderol," etc., which entered so largely into the composition of the ballads and songs that were popular in England during the last century, and would unquestionably have been placed by Mrs. Chick in the same reprehensible category with "the equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark of rumpte-iddity, bow-wow-wow!" The most frequently used terms of this description are juchhei or juchhe, and juchheisa; but there is an almost endless variety of others, such as sasa, hopsasa, huideijaja, pumps-vallera, vivallerallera, etc. And whenever the subject to be treated is the inspiring theme of war and its natural attributes—parades, martial music and the like—the ingenious Teutonic muse breaks forth into just such a strain as a party of small boys in America would indulge in while "playing soldiers." Very few lays of this kind are without such additions as tra-ra-ra, pilly-willy-wink (supposed, on some unaccountable principle of onomatopoeia, to represent the sound of a fife), bum-bum-bum, and dirum-dirum-d'rum.
One of the most popular writers of German humorous fiction in prose at the present time is Fritz Reuter, whose stories in the Plattdeutsch dialect are read and appreciated all over the country. He is an author of very great ability, and some of his works show a great deal of keenness and ingenuity in burlesqueing the manners and the pretensions of the little courts in those petty German principalities that are now things of the past. In such instances as this, too, the same general features that have before been noticed are discernible to a very great extent; and indeed, in the case of Reuter's productions, that simplicity which has been referred to is even increased by the peculiarities of the provincial patois in which they are written.
There is, however, no reason for finding fault with German humor on the score of that broadness and childlike simplicity and naiveté which are observable among its elements. We may not, it is true, receive the impression that a very high degree of intellect or much delicacy of perception was employed in producing its manifestations. But the great achievements of the Germans in many other far more important directions make it impossible to question the vast mental power and indomitable energy of the people, or to suppose that this state of things takes its origin in any kind of weakness. After all, too, there can be no doubt that the best kind of humor is that which is thoroughly hearty, genial and sincere; and in these respects that of Germany has no superior in the world. W. W. C.
THE PEDIGREE OF SOME FAMOUS JEWELS.
Many of the present generation who were familiar with Paris prior to the late Franco-Prussian war will recall the sensation produced by every appearance of the old duke of Brunswick, who for many years resided in that city. His residence was a spacious, brick-colored chateau of very quaint architecture situated not far from the Champs Elysées, on the Boulevard Beaujon, and, together with its surroundings, seemed so utterly
