In the last verse, he surpassed himself.  He glowered round upon us with a look of such concentrated ferocity that, but for our being forewarned as to the German method of comic singing, we should have been nervous; and he threw such a wailing note of agony into the weird music that, if we had not known it was a funny song, we might have wept.

He finished amid a perfect shriek of laughter.  We said it was the funniest thing we had ever heard in all our lives.  We said how strange it was that, in the face of things like these, there should be a popular notion that the Germans hadn’t any sense of humor.  And we asked the Professor why he didn’t translate the song into English, so that the common people could understand it, and hear what a real comic song was like.

Then Herr Slossenn Boschen got up, and went on awful.  He swore at us in German (which I should judge to be a singularly effective language for that purpose), and he danced, and shook his fists, and called us all the English he knew.  He said he had never been so insulted in all his life.

It appeared that the song was not a comic song at all.  It was about a young girl who lived in the Harz Mountains, and who had given up her life to save her lover’s soul; and he died, and met her spirit in the air; and then, in the last verse, he jilted her spirit, and went on with another spirit—­I’m not quite sure of the details, but it was something very sad, I know.  Herr Boschen said he had sung it once before the German Emperor, and he (the German Emperor) had sobbed like a little child.  He (Herr Boschen) said it was generally acknowledged to be one of the most tragic and pathetic songs in the German language.

It was a trying situation for us—­very trying.  There seemed to be no answer.  We looked around for the two young men who had done this thing, but they had left the house in an unostentatious manner immediately after the end of the song.

That was the end of that party.  I never saw a party break up so quietly, and with so little fuss.  We never said good-night even to one another.  We came downstairs one at a time, walking softly, and keeping the shady side.  We asked the servant for our hats and coats in whispers, and opened the door, and slipped out, and got round the corner quickly, avoiding each other as much as possible.

I have never taken much interest in German songs since then.

THE INCHCAPE ROCK

By ROBERT SOUTHEY

NOTE.—­The Inchcape Rock, or Bell Rock, is a dangerous reef in the North Sea, east of the Firth of Tay, in Scotland, and twelve miles from all land.  The story of the forethought of the abbot of Aberbrothok in placing the bell on the buoy as a warning to sailors is an ancient one, and one old writer thus gives the tradition made use of by Southey in this poem: 

“In old times upon the said rocke there was a bell fixed upon a timber, which rang continually, being moved by the sea, giving notice to saylers of the danger.  The bell was put there and maintained by the abbot of Aberbrothok, but being taken down by a sea-pirate, a yeare thereafter he perished upon the same rocke, with ship and goodes, in the righteous judgment of God.”