Note 8 — PART ONE 1843–1861

The joke is the same as in the story of the Englishman who mistook the American ambassador in his plain evening dress for a waiter, and gave him the order, “Call me a cab,” to which Ambassador Choate replied, “You’re a cab,” and afterwards defended himself by saying, “He asked me to call him a cab, and I did; and I would have called him a han’som’ cab if he hadn’t been so ugly.” But in English the troublesome words are a mere ambiguity; in German it is a case of erroneously using for the one sense the forms that properly convey the other sense, so that the interpretation which the father-in-law puts upon the suitor’s words, strained as it looks in the translation, is really the only interpretation which the words as spoken will bear.—Translator.