Page:Hermione and her little group of serious thinkers (1923, c1916).djvu/142

 KULTUR, AND THINGS

O you know, Kultur isn't the same thing at all as culture… fancy!

When we took it up—Kultur, I mean—yes, we took it up in quite a serious way the other evening—our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know—and threshed it out thoroughly—we hadn't the slightest idea that it would lead us straight to Nietzsche and—and, well, all those people like that, if you get what I mean. Though, of course, as the man who spoke to us—he was the loveliest person!—spoke in German, we may have missed some of the finer shades.

Oh, yes, I had German in high school… really, I was quite proficient… although, of course, it's such a guttural kind of language—don't you think?—that one wonders how they ever sing it. And then, the verbs!… but I had Latin verbs about the same time, you know… and really, isn't it surprising how some of those foreign languages seem to run to verbs, if you get what I mean?

It seems it was the Germans who invented the [128]