Mark Twain, best known for Huckleberry Finn and other yarns, had two fixations in his life: the weather and the German language. He brings both together in a short story in Merry Tales, published in 1892, entitled "Mrs McWilliams and the Lightning".
The chief protagonist is one Mortimer McWilliams, whom Twain meets on a railway journey: " `Well, sir,' continued Mr McWilliams, `the fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women; but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes in a man. A woman who could face the very devil himself - or a mouse - loses her grip and goes all to pieces with a flash of lightning.'"
McWilliams tells Twain of a recent experience in a latenight thunderstorm: "Well, I woke up with a smothered and unlocatable cry of `Mortimer! Mortimer!' wailing in my ears; and as soon as I could scrape my faculties together I reached over in the dark and said: `Evangeline, is that you calling? What is the matter? Where are you?' '.
"Shut up in the boot-closet" is Evangeline's reply: `You ought to be ashamed to lie there and sleep so, and such an awful storm going on.' She issues many instructions as to how her spouse may escape destruction by the lightning, and finally demands: "Mortimer, something must be done to ensure your preservation.
"Give me that German book on the end of the mantel-piece, and a candle."
"Mortimer, it says: `Wah rend eines Gewitters entferne man Metalle, wie z.B. Ringe, Uhren, Schlussel, etc., von sich und halte sich auch nicht an solchen Stellen auf, wo viele Metalle bei einander liegen, oder mit andern Korpern verbunden sind, wie an Herden, Eisengittern u. dgl.' What does that mean, Mortimer?' "
To which Mortimer responds: "Well, I hardly know, my dear. It appears to be a little mixed. All German advice is more or less mixed. However, I think the sentence is mostly in the dative case, with a little genitive and accusative sifted in for luck; so I reckon it means that you must keep some metal about you."
And so it goes, with many other misadventures, until: " `Yes, Mr Twain, as I was saying in the beginning,' said Mr McWilliams, `the rules for preserving people against lightning are so excellent and so innumerable that the most incomprehensible thing in the world is how anybody ever gets struck.' So saying, he gathered up his satchel and umbrella, and departed; for the train had reached his town."