PUCK, May 4th, 1887. “How often all Europe goes into what we slang-loving Americans call a keniption fit over a political ‘incident!’ We don’t care to attempt an exact definition of the word ‘keniption;’ but we are quite willing to explain that an ‘incident,’ in European politics, means a small affair of great importance. A native peasant pokes his umbrella into a foreign ambassador’s eye—that is an incident. A foreign ambassador pokes his umbrella into a native peasant’s eye—that also is an incident. On such incidents the fate of nations hangs. It may be the Mortara incident, or the Benedetti incident, or, as it is now, the Schnaebeles or Schnaebele or SchnaebelÉ incident, (how does he spell his gallicised German name?) but no year can pass without its incident, over which the press must shriek, and diplomats must excite themselves, and quarts of honest ink and ohms of good electric force must be wasted.

“The incident himself—there is generally a personality to the incident—is, as a rule, a most unimportant individual. There are exceptional cases, of course. Benedetti was a man of importance. He had too much importance, mayhap. But he would never have written his name in large script upon history’s page had he not been snubbed in a public park. So is it with Schnaebeles. He is world-famous to-day, who will never do anything else in his life that will get his name in American or English newspapers. He has been arrested by Germany, he, a French official, and he is an incident. He is an incident who does not amount to much, it seems; but still he is an incident. Twenty, thirty, forty years from now, a withered, snuffy, oddly dressed old man will sit, perchance, in front of some Paris cafÉ, sipping his eau sucrÉe or his syruped vermouth, and the boulevardier who passes by will say to his friend; ‘That is Schnaebele.’

“‘And who is Schnaebele?’ the friend will inquire, wonderingly.

“‘Why, have you forgotten your history? The hero of the Schnaebele incident—in 1887—or ’78—which was it? When we were so near going to war with Germany.’

“‘Ah, bah!’ his friend will reply; ‘un marron glacÉ! Qu’est-ce que tu me donnes!’

“And that is what it is to be an incident.”—Puck, May 4th, 1887.