PENSYLVANIA 109 



the trouble to put down more of this sort of non-sense 

 which many of my countrymen still tickle the ears 

 with. And besides speaking scurvily, there is as bad 

 writing and printing. Melchior Steiner's German estab- 

 lishment (formerly Christoph Sauer's) prints a weekly 

 German newspaper which contains numerous sorrowful 

 examples of the miserably deformed speech of our 

 American fellow-countrymen. This newspaper is 

 chiefly made up of translations from English sheets, 

 but so stiffly done and so anglic as to be mawkish. The 

 two German ministers and Mr. Steiner himself over- 

 see the sheet. If I mistake not, Mr. Kunze alone re- 

 ceives 100 Pd. Pens. Current for his work. ' If we 

 wrote in German/ say the compilers in excuse, ' our 

 American farmers would neither understand it nor 

 read it/ 



It was hardly to be expected that the German lan- 

 guage, even as worst degenerated, could ever have gone 

 to ruin and oblivion with quite such rapidity public 

 worship, the Bible, and the estimable almanack * might, 

 so it seems, transmit a language for many generations, 

 even if fresh emigrants did not from time to time add 

 new strength. But probably the free and immediate 

 intercourse now begun between the mother-country and 

 America will involve a betterment of the language. 

 Since America, in the item of German literature, is 30- 

 40 years behind, it might possibly be a shrewd specula- 



* Several Deutsche Amerikanisch Stadt-und Land-Calender 

 appear annually, published by Mr. Steiner and Mr. Carl Cist. 

 Plan and arrangement the same as with our praiseworthy 

 Almanack in quarto articles on bleeding and lancing, how to 

 judge the blood, how to fell trees, edifying stories, home-spun 

 verse nothing omitted. 



