Lee Light Grumbine Was a True Intellectual

Lee Light Grumbine is still another writer featured in the book "Pennsylvania-German Dialect Writings and Their Writers" compiled and interpreted by Harry Hess Reichard, Ph.D. and published in Lancaster, Pa. (1918) by the Pennsylvania German Society. This text is one of many given to me by my friend, Roger Shaffer, of Hellertown, several years ago, not too long before he died. As he had wished, I have read about one-third of his private collection and "put them to good use." There are many more to tackle, from which I intend to share the culture of our heritage.

Born July 25, 1858, in Fredericksburg, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, Grumbine has been described as having "native histrionic capabilities." He might well have been one of the best educated men of the vicinity. After completing public schools, he attended Palatinate College and Wesleyan University, where he learned teaching and law.

In 1886 he became an instructor of elocution at Cornell, and three years later principal of the school of oratory at Silver Lake School in New York. Next, he founded the "Lebanon Daily Report" paper where he expressed his views as a Prohibitionist. In 1891 he suggested the formation of the Pennsylvania German Society. At its first meeting he read his 21 12-verse poem, "Marriage of the Muse." Being an expert speaker, I am quite certain that no one dared to nod off.

To conclude, I will quote my favorite observation by this true intellectual. DO NOT FALL ASLEEP out of respect. Use a cattle prod if need be.

"The Pennsylvania German occupies a unique place among the tongues of Babel and their derivations. It is like a provincial rustic youth, strong in the vigor of athletic young manhood, lusty in the spirit of adventure and joviality, schooled in self reliance, honesty and industry, trained in all the domestic virtues, love of home, of work of kin and of God, but not used to the courtliness of state, unskilled in the hollowness of vain compliment, untutored in the frippery and polish of artificial society, unacquainted with the insincerity and diplomacy of the wider world, removed from kith and kin, and thrown upon his own resources among strangers and new surroundings."

Does this sound like the proverbial "fish out of water?" Are you acquainted with any phony baloneys, full of themselves and their own plasticity? Don't look at me. I'm a renter. WAKE UP AND FINISH YOUR BEER!