Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN HAMBURG
journal six days old, and yet gets from it the only
informing matter, the only matter worth reading,
which it has yet published from that smitten city
concerning the pestilence.
You see, it did not even occur to that petrified
editor to bail his columns dry of their customary
chloroform and copy that Hamburg journal entire.
He is so used to shoveling gravel that he doesn't
know a diamond when he sees it. I would trust that
man with untold bushels of precious news, and nobody to watch him. Among other things which he
notes in the Hamburg paper is the fact that its
supplements contained one hundred of the customary
elaborate and formal German death notices. That
means-what nobody has had reason to suppose
before-that the slaughter is not confined to the poor
and friendless. I think so, because that sort of death
notice occupies a formidable amount of space in an
advertising page, and must cost a good deal of money.
I wander from my proper subject to observe that
one hundred of these notices in a single journal must
make that journal a sorrow to the eye and a shock to
the taste, even among the Germans themselves, who
are bred to endure and perhaps enjoy a style of " display ads" which far surpasses even the vilest American attempts, for insane and outrageous ugliness.
Sometimes a death notice is as large as a foolscap
page, has big black display lines, and is bordered
all around with a coarse mourning border as thick
as your finger. The notices are of all sizes from
foolscap down to a humble two-inch square, and
they suggest lamentation of all degrees, from the
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