Posted by the mouse joker 11/08/00:

because you always like this parker (even if you have heard it a hundred times before):

A New German Word
By Mark Twain
From Mark Twain's Speeches (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910).(*)

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To aid a local charity Mr. Clemens appeared before a fashionable audience in Vienna, March 10, 1899, reading his sketch "The Lucerne Girl," and describing how he had been interviewed and ridiculed. He said in part:

I have not sufficiently mastered German to allow my using it with impunity. My collection of fourteen-syllable German words is still incomplete. But I have just added to that collection a jewel -- a veritable jewel. I found it in a telegram from Linz, and it contains ninety-five letters:

Personaleinkommensteuerschätzungs-
kommissionsmitgliedsreisekosten-
rechnungsergänzungsrevisionsfund

If I could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone I should sleep beneath it in peace.

Note
* Paul Fatout, in Mark Twain Speaking (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1976), dates this speech as delivered March 10, 1899. --Ed.

sterbewohl - the mouse joker 11/08/00