 This is Chapter 24 of A Tramp Abroad. That was a thoroughly satisfactory walk, and the only one we were ever to have, which was all the way downhill. We took the train next morning and returned to Baden-Baden through fearful fogs of dust. Every seat was crowded, too, for it was Sunday, and consequently everybody was taking a pleasure excursion. Hot! The sky was an oven, and a sound one, too, with no cracks in it to let in any air. An odd time for a pleasure excursion, certainly. Sunday is the great day on the Continent, the free day, the happy day. One can break the Sabbath in a hundred ways without committing any sin. We do not work on Sunday because the commandment forbids it. The Germans do not work on Sunday because the commandment forbids it. We rest on Sunday because the commandment requires it. The Germans rest on Sunday because the commandment requires it. But in the definition of the word rest lies all the difference. With us its Sunday meaning is stay in the house and keep still. With the Germans its Sunday and weekday meanings seem to be the same. Rest the tired part, and never mind the other parts of the frame. Rest the tired part, and use the means best calculated to rest that particular part. Thus, if one's duties have kept him in the house all the week, it will rest him to be out on Sunday. If his duties have required him to read weighty and serious matter all the week, it will rest him to read light matter on Sunday. If his occupation has busied him with death and funerals all the week, it will rest him to go to the theatre Sunday night and put in two or three hours laughing at a comedy. If he is tired with digging ditches or felling trees all the week, it will rest him to lie quiet in the house on Sunday. If the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue, or any other member is fatigued with inination, it is not to be rested by adding a days inination. But if a member is fatigued with exertion, inination is the right rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germans seem to define the word rest. That is to say, they rest a member by recreating, recuperating, restoring its forces. But our definition is less broad. We all rest alike on Sunday by secluding ourselves and keeping still, whether that is the surest way to rest the most of us or not. The Germans make the actors, the preachers, etc., work on Sunday. We encourage the preachers, the editors, the printers, etc., to work on Sunday, and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us. But I do not know how we are going to get around the fact that if it is wrong for the printer to work at his trade on Sunday it must be equally wrong for the preacher to work at his, since the commandment has made no exception in his favour. We buy Monday morning's paper and read it, and thus encourage Sunday printing. But I shall never do it again. The Germans remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy by abstaining from work, as commanded. We keep it holy by abstaining from work, as commanded, and by also abstaining from play, which is not commanded. Perhaps we constructively break the command to rest, because the resting we do is in most cases only a name and not a fact. These reasonings have sufficed in the measure to mend the rent in my conscience which I made by travelling to Baden-Baden that Sunday. We arrived in time to furbish up and get to the English church before services began. We arrived in considerable style, too, for the landlord had ordered the first carriage that could be found, since there was no time to lose, and our coachman was so splendidly liveried that we were probably mistaken for a brace of stray dukes. Why else were we honoured with a pew all to ourselves, away up among the very elect at the left of the chancel? That was my first thought. In the pew directly in front of us sat an elderly lady, plainly and cheaply dressed. At her side sat a young lady with a very sweet face, and she also was quite simply dressed. But around us and about us were clothes and jewels, which it would do anybody's heart good to worship in. I thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady was embarrassed at finding herself in such a conspicuous place arrayed in such cheap apparel. I began to feel sorry for her and troubled about her. She tried to seem very busy with her prayer-book and her responses, and unconscious that she was out of place, but I said to myself, she is not succeeding, there is a distressed tremulousness in her voice which betrays increasing embarrassment. Suddenly the Saviour's name was mentioned, and in her flurry she lost her head completely and rose and curtsied, instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did. The sympathetic blood surged to my temples and I turned and gave those fine birds what I intended to be a beseeching look, but my feelings got the better of me and changed it into a look which said, if any of you pets of fortune laugh at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed for it. Things went from bad to worse, and I shortly found myself mentally taking the unfriended lady under my protection. My mind was wholly upon her. I forgot all about the sermon. Her embarrassment took stronger and stronger hold upon her. She got to snapping the lid of her smelling-bottle. It made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she snapped and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing. The last extremity was reached when the collection-plate began its rounds. The moderate people threw in pennies, the nobles and the rich contributed silver, but she laid a twenty-mark gold-piece upon the book-rest before her with a sounding slap. I said to myself, she has parted with all her little hoard to buy the consideration of these unpitying people. It is a sorrowful spectacle. I did not venture to look around this time, but as the service closed I said to myself, let them laugh. It is their opportunity. But at the door of this church they shall see her step into our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman shall drive her home. Then she rose, and all the congregation stood while she walked down the aisle. She was the empress of Germany. No, she had not been so much embarrassed as I had supposed. My imagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that is always hopeless. One is sure then to go straight on misinterpreting everything clear through to the end. The young lady with her imperial majesty was a maid of honour, and I had been taking her for one of her borders all the time. This is the only time I have ever had an empress under my personal protection, and considering my inexperience, I wonder I got through with it so well. I should have been a little embarrassed myself if I had known earlier what sort of a contract I had on my hands. We found that the empress had been in Baden-Baden several days. It is said that she never attends any but the English form of church service. I lay a bed and read and rested from my journey's fatigues the remainder of that Sunday, but I sent my agent to represent me at the afternoon service, for I never allow anything to interfere with my habit of attending church twice every Sunday. There was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night to hear the band play the Freemus Berg. This piece tells one of the old legends of the region, how a great noble of the Middle Ages got lost in the mountains, and wandered about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at last the faint tones of a monastery bell calling the monks to a midnight service caught his ear, and he followed the direction the sounds came from, and was saved. A beautiful air ran through the music without ceasing, sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it could hardly be distinguished, but it was always there. It swung grandly along through the shrill whistling of the storm wind, the rattling patter of the rain, and the boom and crash of the thunder. It wound soft and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones, such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious winding of the hunter's horn, the distressed bayings of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks. He rose again with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself with the country songs and dances of the peasants assembled in the convent hall to cheer up the rescued huntsmen while he ate his supper. The instruments imitated all these sounds with a marvelous exactness. More than one man started to raise his umbrella when the storm burst forth and the sheets of mimic rain came driving by. It was hardly possible to keep from putting your hand to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and shriek, and it was not possible to refrain from starting when those sudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were let loose. I suppose the Frimersberg is a very low-grade music. I know indeed that it must be low-grade music, because it delighted me, warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, enraptured me, and I was full of cry all the time, and mad with enthusiasm. My soul had never had such a scouring out since I was born. The solemn and majestic chanting of the monks was not done by instruments but by men's voices, and it rose and fell, and rose again in that rich confusion of warring sounds, and pulsing bells, and the stately swing of that ever-present enchanting air, and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest of low-grade music could be so divinely beautiful. The great crowd which the Frimersberg had called out was another evidence that it was low-grade music, for only the few are educated up to a point where high-grade music gives pleasure. I have never heard enough classic music to be able to enjoy it. I dislike the opera, because I want to love it and count. I suppose there are two kinds of music, one kind which one feels, just as an oyster might, and another sort which requires a higher faculty, a faculty which must be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet, if bass music gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? But we do. We want it because the higher and better like it. We want it without giving it the necessary time and trouble, so we climb into that upper tier that dress-circle by a lie. We pretend we like it. I know several of that sort of people, and I propose to be one of them myself when I get home with my fine European education. And then there is painting. What a red rag is to a bull, Turner's slave-ship was to me before I studied art. Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage last year when I was ignorant. His cultivation enables him and me now to see water in that glaring yellow mud and natural effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame and crimson sunset glories. It reconciles him and me now to the floating of iron cable-chains and other unflotable things. It reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top of the mud, I mean the water. Most of the picture is a manifest impossibility, that is to say, a lie. An only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find truth in a lie, but it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do it, and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it. A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the slave-ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows and said it reminded him of a tortoise shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. From my then uneducated state that went home to my non-cultivation, and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye. Mr. Ruskin would have said, this person is an ass. That is what I would say now, footnote one. Months after this was written I happened into the National Gallery in London and soon became so fascinated with the Turner pictures that I could hardly get away from the place. I went there often afterward, meaning to see the rest of the gallery, but the Turner spell was too strong. It could not be shaken off. However, the Turner's, which attracted me most, did not remind me of the slave-ship. End of note one. However, our business in Badden-Baden this time was to join our courier. I had thought it best to hire one, as we should be in Italy by and by, and we did not know the language. Neither did he. We found him at the hotel, ready to take charge of us. I asked him if he was all fixed. He said he was. That was very true. He had a trunk, two small satchels, and an umbrella. I was to pay him fifty-five dollars a month and railway fares. On the Continent the railway fare on a trunk is about the same it is on a man. Couriers do not have to pay any board in lodging. This seems a great saving to the tourist, at first. It does not occur to the tourist that somebody pays that man's board in lodging. It occurs to him by and by, however, in one of his lucid moments. End of Chapter 24 This is Chapter 25 of A Tramp Abroad. This Liber-Vox recording is in the public domain. A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain, Chapter 25, hunted by the little shammy. Last morning we left in the train for Switzerland and reached Lucerne about ten o'clock at night. The first discovery I made was that the beauty of the lake had not been exaggerated. Within a day or two I made another discovery. This was that the lauded shammy is not a wild goat, that it is not a horned animal, that it is not shy, that it does not avoid human society, and that there is no peril in hunting it. The shammy is a black or brown creature, no bigger than a mustard seed. You do not have to go after it, it comes after you. It arrives in vast herds and skips and scampers all over your body, inside your clothes. Thus it is not shy, but extremely sociable. It is not afraid of men, on the contrary, it will attack him. Its bite is not dangerous, but neither is it pleasant. Its activity has not been overstated. If you try to put your finger on it, it will skip a thousand times its own length at one jump, and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights. A great deal of romantic nonsense has been written about the Swiss shammy and the perils of hunting it, whereas the truth is that even women and children hunt it, and fearlessly. Indeed, everybody hunts it. The hunting is going on all the time, day and night, in bed and out of it. It is poetic foolishness to hunt it with a gun. Very few people do that. There is not one man in a million who can hit it with a gun. It is much easier to catch it than it is to shoot it, and only the experienced shammy hunter can do either. Another common piece of exaggeration is that about the scarcity of the shammy. It is the reverse of scarce. Droves of one hundred million shammy are not unusual in the Swiss hotels. Indeed, they are so numerous as to be a great pest. The Romancers always dress up the shammy hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume, whereas the best way to hunt this game is to do it without any costume at all. The article of commerce called Shammy Skin is another fraud. Nobody could skin a shammy, it is too small. The creature is a humbug in every way, and everything which has been written about it is sentimental exaggeration. It was no pleasure to me to find the shammy out, for he had been one of my pet illusions, all my life it had been my dream to see him in his native wild some day, and engage in the adventurous sport of chasing him from cliff to cliff. It is no pleasure to me to expose him now and destroy the reader's delight in him and respect for him, but still it must be done. For when an honest writer discovers an imposition, it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honour, no matter who suffers by it. Any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence. Lucerne is a charming place. It begins at the water's edge, with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads itself over two or three sharp hills, in a crowded, disorderly but picturesque way, offering to the eye a heaped up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over the ridges, worm fashion, and here and there an old square tower of heavy masonry. And also here and there a town clock with only one hand, a hand which stretches across the dial and has no joint in it. Such a clock helps out the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it. Between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad avenue with lamps and a double rank of low-shade trees. The lakefront is walled with masonry like a pier, and has a railing to keep people from walking overboard. All day long the vehicles dash along the avenues, and nurses, children and tourists sit in the shade of the trees, or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake at the stately border of snow-hooded mountain peaks. Little pleasure-steamers, black with people, are coming and going all the time, and everywhere one sees young girls and young men paddling about in fanciful row-boats or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind. The front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies where one may take his private luncheon in calm, cool comfort, and look down upon this busy and pretty scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work connected with it. Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking costume and carry alpinestocks. Evidently it is not considered safe to go about in Switzerland, even in town, without an alpinestock. If the tourist forgets and comes down to breakfast without his alpinestock he goes back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner. When his touring in Switzerland is finished he does not throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could. You see, the alpinestock is his trophy. His name is burned upon it, and if he has climbed a hill, or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, he has the names of those places burned upon it too. Thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears the record of his achievements. It is worth three francs when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it. There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is to burn these things upon the alpinestock of the tourist, and observe a man is respected in Switzerland according to his alpinestock. I found I could get no attention there while I carried an unbranded one. However, branding is not expected, so I soon remedied that. The effect upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked. I felt repaid for my trouble. Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of English people. The other half is made up of many nationalities, the Germans leading, and the Americans coming next. The Americans were not as numerous as I had expected they would be. The 730 Tabledot at the great Schweitzerhof furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities, but it offered a better opportunity to observe costumes than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables, and therefore the faces were mainly seen in perspective. But the breakfasts were served at small round tables, and then, if one had the fortune to get a table in the midst of the assemblage, he could have as many faces to study as he could desire. We used to try to guess out the nationalities, and generally succeeded tolerably well. Sometimes we tried to guess people's names, but that was a failure. That is a thing which probably requires a good deal of practice. We presently dropped it, and gave our efforts to less difficult particulars. One morning I said, There is an American party! Harris said, Yes, but name the state! I named one state Harris named another. We agreed upon one thing, however, that the young girl with the party was very beautiful and very tastefully dressed. But we disagreed as to her age. I said she was eighteen. Harris said she was twenty. The dispute between us waxed warm, and I finally said with a pretense of being an earnest, Well, there is one way to settle the matter. I will go and ask her. Harris said sarcastically, Certainly, that is the thing to do. All you need to do is to use the common formula over here. Go and say, I am an American. Of course, she will be glad to see you. Then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger of my venturing to speak to her. I said, I was only talking. I didn't intend to approach her. But I see that you do not know what an intrepid person I am. I am not afraid of any woman that walks. I will go and speak to this young girl. The thing I had in mind was not difficult. I meant to address her in the most respectful way, and ask her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former acquaintance of mine was deceiving me, and when she should reply that the name I mentioned was not the name she bore, I meant to beg pardon again most respectfully and retire. There would be no harm done. I walked to her table, bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her, and was about to begin my little speech when she exclaimed, I knew I wasn't mistaken. I told John it was you. John said it probably wasn't, but I knew I was right. I said you would recognize me presently and come over. I'm glad you did, for I shouldn't have felt much flattered if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me. Sit down, sit down! How odd it is! You are the last person I was ever expecting to see again. This was a stupefying surprise. It took my wits clear away for an instant, however we shook hands cordially all around and I sat down. But truly this was the tightest place I ever was in. I seemed to vaguely remember the girl's face now, but I had no idea where I had seen it before, or what name belonged with it. I immediately tried to get up a diversion about Swiss scenery to keep her from launching into topics that might betray that I did not know her, but it was of no use. She went right along upon matters which interested her more. Oh, dear! What a night that was! When the sea washed the forward boats away, do you remember it? Oh, don't I, said I, but I didn't. I wish the sea had washed the rudder and the smokestack and the captain away. Then I could have located this questioner. And don't you remember how frightened poor Mary was and how she cried? Indeed I do, said I. Dear me, how it all comes back! I fervently wished it would come back, but my memory was a blank. The wise way would have been to frankly own up, but I could not bring myself to do that after the young girl had praised me so for recognizing her. So I went on, deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue, but never getting one. The unrecognizable continued with vivacity. Do you know George married Mary after all? Why, no, did he? Indeed he did. He said he did not believe she was half as much to blame as her father was, and I thought he was right, didn't you? Of course he was. It was a perfectly plain case, I always said so. Why, no you didn't, at least that summer—oh, no, not that summer—no, you are perfectly right about that. It was the following winter that I said it. Well, as it turned out, Mary was not in the least to blame. It was all her father's fault. At least his and old Darley's. It was necessary to say something, so I said. I always regarded Darley as a troublesome old thing. So he was, but then they always had a great affection for him, although he had so many eccentricities. You remember that when the weather was the least cold he would try to come into the house. I was rather afraid to proceed. Evidently Darley was not a man—he must be some other kind of animal, possibly a dog, maybe an elephant. However, tails are common to all animals, so I ventured to say, and what a tail he had! One! He had a thousand! This was bewildering. I did not quite know what to say, so I only said, yes, he was rather well fixed in the matter of tails. For a negro and a crazy one at that, I should say he was, said she. It was getting pretty sultry for me, I said to myself. Is it possible she is going to stop there and wait for me to speak? If she does the conversation is blocked. A negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more or less preparation. As to diving rashly into such a vast subject, but here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thoughts by saying, yes, when it came to tails of his crazy woes there was simply no end to them if anybody would listen. His own quarters were comfortable enough, but when the weather was cold, the family were sure to have his company. Nothing could keep him out of the house. But they all was bored kindly because he had saved Tom's life years before. You remember Tom? Oh, perfectly! Fine fellow he was too. Yes, he was, and what a pretty little thing his child was. You may well say that. I never saw a prettier child. I used to delight to pet it and dandel it and play with it. So did I. You named it. What was that name? I can't call it to mind. It appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty thin here. I would have given something to know what the child's was. However, I had the good luck to think of a name that would fit either sex. I named it Francis. From a relative, I suppose. But you named the one that died, too, one that I never saw. What did you call that one? I was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead, and she had never seen it, I thought I might risk a name for it and trust luck. Therefore I said, I called that one Thomas Henry. She said musingly, That is very singular, very singular. I sat still and let the cold sweat run down. I was in a good deal of trouble, but I believed I could worry through if she wouldn't ask me to name any more children. I wondered where the lightning was going to strike next. She was still ruminating over that last child's title, but presently she said, I have always been sorry you were away at the time. I would have had you name my child. Your child? Are you married? I have been married thirteen years. Christend you mean? No, married. The youth by your side is my son. It seems incredible, even impossible. I do not mean any harm by it, but would you mind telling me if you are any over eighteen? That is to say, will you tell me how old you are? I was just nineteen the day of the storm we were talking about. That was my birthday. That did not help matters much as I did not know the date of the storm. I tried to think of some non-committal thing to say to keep up my end of the talk and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences as little noticeable as possible, but I seemed to be about out of non-committal things. I was about to say you haven't changed a bit since then, but that was risky. I thought of saying you have improved ever so much since then, but that wouldn't answer, of course. I was about to try a shy at the weather for a saving change when the girl slipped in ahead of me and said, How I have enjoyed this talk over those happy old times, haven't you? I never have spent such a half hour in all my life before, said I with emotion, and I could have added, with a nearer approach to truth, and I would rather be scalp than spend another one like it. I was holily grateful to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make my goodbyes and get out when the girl said, But there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me. Why, what is that? That dead child's name. What did you say it was? Here was another balmy place to be in, I'd forgotten the child's name. I hadn't imagined it would be needed again. However I had to pretend to know anyway, so I said, Joseph William, the youth that my side corrected me, and said, No, Thomas Henry. I thanked him in words, and said with trepidation, Oh, yes, I was thinking of another child that I named. I have named a great many, and I get them confused. This one was named Henry Thompson. Thomas Henry calmly interposed the boy. I thanked him again, strictly in words, and stammered out, Thomas Henry, yes, Henry was the poor child's name. I named him for Thomas, Thomas Carlisle, the great author, you know, and Henry, Henry VIII. The parents were very grateful to have a child named Thomas Henry. That makes it more singular than ever, murmured my beautiful friend. Does it? Why? Because when the parents speak of that child now, they always call it Susan Amelia. That spiked my gun. I could not say anything. I was entirely out of verbal obliquities. To go further would be to lie, and that I would not do. So I simply sat still, and suffered, sat mutely, and residedly there, and sizzled. For I was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes. Presently the enemy laughed, a happy laugh, and said, I have enjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not. I saw very soon that you were only pretending to know me, and so, as I had wasted a compliment on you in the beginning, I made up my mind to punish you. And I have succeeded pretty well. I was glad to see that you knew George, and Tom, and Darlene, for I had never heard of them before, and therefore could not be sure that you had. And I was glad to learn the names of those imaginary children, too. One can get quite a fund of information out of you if one goes at it cleverly. Mary and the storm, and the sweeping away of the forward boats, were facts. All the rest was fiction. Mary was my sister. Her full name was Mary Blank. Now do you remember me? Yes, I said. I do remember you now. And you are as hard-headed as you were thirteen years ago in that ship, else you wouldn't have punished me so. You haven't changed your nature nor your person in any way at all. You look as young as you did then. You are just as beautiful as you were then, and you have transmitted a deal of your comeliness to this fine boy. There, if that speech moves you any, let's fly the flag of truce, with the understanding that I am conquered and confess it. All of which was agreed to and accomplished on the spot. When I went back to Harris I said, Now you see what a person with talent and address can do. Excuse me! I see what a person of colossal ignorance and simplicity can do. The idea of your going and intruding on a party of strangers that way, and talking for half an hour, why I never heard of a man in his right mind doing such a thing before. What did you say to them? I never said any harm. I merely asked the girl what her name was. I don't doubt it, upon my word I don't. I think you were capable of it. It was stupid of me to let you go over there and make such an exhibition of yourself. But you know I couldn't really believe you would do such an inexcusable thing. What will those people think of us? But how did you say it? I mean the manner of it. I hope you were not abrupt. No. I was careful about that. I said, My friend and I would like to know what your name is, if you don't mind. No, that was not abrupt. There is a polish about it that does you infinite credit. And I am glad you put me in. That was a delicate attention which I appreciate at its full value. Oh, what did she do? She didn't do anything in particular, she told me her name. Simply told you her name. Do you mean to say she did not show any surprise? Well, now I come to think, she did show something. Maybe it was surprise. I hadn't thought of that. I took it for gratification. Oh, undoubtedly you were right. It must have been in gratification. It could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted by a stranger with such a question as that. Then what did you do? I offered my hand and the party gave me a shake. I saw it. I did not believe my own eyes at the time. Did the gentlemen say anything about cutting your throat? No, they all seemed glad to see me, as far as I could judge. And you know I believe they were. I think they said to themselves, doubtless this curiosity has got away from his keeper. Let us amuse ourselves with him. There is no other way of accounting for their facile docility. You sat down. Did they ask you to sit down? No, they did not ask me, but I suppose they did not think of it. You have an unerring instinct. What else did you do? What did you talk about? Well, I asked the girl how old she was. Undoubtedly. Your delicacy is beyond praise. Go on, go on, don't mind my apparent misery. I always look so when I am steeped in a profound and reverent joy. Go on. She told you her age? Yes, she told me her age, and all about her mother and her grandmother and her other relatives and all about herself. Did she volunteer these statistics? No, not exactly that. I asked the questions and she answered them. This is divine. Go on. It is not possible that you forgot to inquire into her politics. No, I thought of that. She is a Democrat. Her husband is a Republican, and both of them are Baptists. Her husband? Is that child married? She is not a child. She is married. And that is her husband who is there with her. Has she any children? Yes, seven and a half. That is impossible. No, she has them. She told me herself. Well, but seven and a half! How do you make out the half? Where does the half come in? There is a child which she had by another husband, not this one, but another one. So it is a stepchild, and they do not count in full measure. Another husband? Has she another husband? Yes, four. This one is number four. I don't believe a word of it. It is impossible upon its face. Is that boy there her brother? No, that is her son. He is her youngest. He is not as old as he looked. He is only eleven and a half. These things are all manifestly impossible. This is a wretched business. It is a plain case. They simply took your measure and concluded to fill you up. They seem to have succeeded. I am glad I am not in the mess. They may at least be charitable enough to think there ain't a pair of us. Are they going to stay here long? No. They leave before noon. There is one man who is deeply grateful for that. How did you find out? You asked, I suppose. No. Along at first I inquired into their plans in a general way, and they said they were going to be here a week, and make trips round about. But toward the end of the interview, when I said you and I would tour around with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked if you were from the same establishment that I was. I said you were, and then they said they had changed their mind and considered it necessary to start at once, and visit a Sikh relative in Siberia. Ah, me, you struck the summit. You struck the loftiest altitude of stupidity that human effort has ever reached. You shall have a monument of jackasses' skulls as high as the Strasbourg Spire, if you die before I do. They wanted to know I was from the same establishment that you hailed from, did they? What did they mean by establishment? I don't know. It never occurred to me to ask. Well, I know. They meant an asylum, an idiot asylum. Do you understand? So they do think there's a pair of us after all. Now what do you think of yourself? Well, I don't know. I didn't know I was doing any harm. I didn't mean to do any harm. They were very nice people, and they seemed to like me. Harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom to break some furniture, he said. He was a singularly irascible man. Any little thing would disturb his temper. I had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, I took it out on Harris. One should always get even in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting. CHAPTER XXV. The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. All summer long the tourists flock to that church about six o'clock in the evening and pay their frank and listen to the noise. They don't stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting latecomers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. This tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and best organ in Europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favourable place to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak, then right away the organist would let go another avalanche. The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gym-crackery of the Souvenir sort. The shops are packed with alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the lion of Lucerne are to be had in them, millions of them, but they are libles upon him every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it. Both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the lion of Lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world is wanting. Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff, for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble, his head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored among the water lilies. And about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion, and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is. Lucerne is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him. She is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues, which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. None of these qualities are kingly, but the last. When together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do the right thing he always managed to do the wrong one. Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. He knew well enough that in national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act as a man, but how he ought to act as a king. He honestly tried to sink the man and be the king, but it was a failure. He only succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good. He was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then, but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good, which it would have done if applied earlier. His comprehension was always a train or two behind hand. If a national toe required amputating he could not see that it needed anything more than a pole-ticing. When others saw that the mortification had reached the knee he first perceived that the toe needed cutting off, so he cut it off, and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the disease had reached the thigh. He was good and honest and well-meaning in the matter of chasing national diseases, but he never could overtake one. As a private man he would have been lovable, but, viewed as a king, he was strictly contemptible. His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of August, when he allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, and forbade them to shed the sacred French blood purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit of St. Louis had descended upon him. It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon I had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker on, there would be no line of Lucerne now, but there would be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which would answer just as well to remember the 10th of August by. Martyrdom made a saint of Mary, Queen of Scots, three hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her saintship yet. Martyrdom made a saint of the trivial and foolish Marie-Antoinette, and her biographers still keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, while unconsciously proving, upon almost every page they write, that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, she supplied, the instinct to root out and get rid of an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him. The hideous but beneficent French Revolution would have been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, or even might not have happened at all, if Marie-Antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born. The world owes a great deal to the French Revolution, and consequently to its two chief promoters, Louis the Poor in Spirit and his Queen. We did not buy any wooden images of the lion, nor any ivory or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones or even any photographic slanders of him. The truth is, these copies were so common, so universal in the shops and everywhere, that they presently became as intolerable to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually becomes to the harassed ear. In Lucerne, too, the wood carvings of other sorts which had been so pleasant to look upon when one saw them occasionally at home soon began to fatigue us. We grew very tired of seeing wooden quails and chickens picking and strutting around clock faces, and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged chamois skipping about wooden rocks or lying upon them in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them. The first day I would have bought a hundred and fifty of these clocks if I had the money, and I did buy three, but on the third day the disease had run its course. I had convalesced, and was in the market once more trying to sell. However, I had no luck, which was just as well, for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when I get them home. For years my pet-a-version had been the cuckoo-clock. Now here I was, at last, right in the creature's home, so wherever I went that distressing ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho was always in my ears. For a nervous man this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler than others, but no sound is quite so inane and silly and aggravating as the ho-ho of a cuckoo-clock I think. I bought one, and I'm carrying it home to a certain person, for I have always said that if the opportunity ever happened I would do that man an ill-turn. What I meant was that I would break one of his legs or something of that sort, but in Lucerne I instantly saw that I could impair his mind. That would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way. So I bought the cuckoo-clock, and if I ever get home with it, he is my meat, as they say in the minds. I thought of another candidate, a book reviewer whom I could name if I wanted to, but after thinking it over I didn't buy him a clock. I couldn't injure his mind. We visited the two long covered wooden bridges which span the green and brilliant hoists just below where it goes plunging and hurrying out of the lake. These ramblings sway-back tunnels are very attractive things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiring water. They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures by old Swiss masters, old boss sign-painters who flourished before the decadence of art. The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water is very clear. The parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages. One day I thought I would stop and see a fish caught. The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which I had not thought of before for twelve years. This one. The Man Who Put Up at Gatsby's. When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in Washington in the winter of sixty-seven, we were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. "'This is lucky. You are Mr. Riley, ain't you?' Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the Republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said, "'I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?' "'That's just what I was doing,' said the man joyously, "'and it's the biggest luck in the world that I found you. My name is Lycans. I'm one of the teachers of the high school, San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco post-mastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it, and here I am.' "'Yes,' said Riley slowly, as you have remarked, Mr. Lycans, "'here you are, and have you got it?' "'Well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. I've brought a petition signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you'll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home. If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation to-night,' said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it, to an unaccustomed ear. "'Oh! to-night, by all means! I haven't got any time to fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed. I ain't the talking-kind, I'm the doing-kind.' "'Yes. You've come to the right place for that. When did you arrive? Just an hour ago. When are you intending to leave? For New York tomorrow evening, for San Francisco next morning. Just so. What are you going to do to-morrow?' "'Do? Why, I've got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven't I?' "'Yes. Very true. That is correct. And then what? An executive session of the Senate at 2 p.m. got to get the appointment confirmed. I reckon you'll grant that.' "'Yes. Yes,' said Riley meditatively, "'you are right again. Then you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?' "'That's it. That's the way I map it out.' Riley considered a while, and then said, "'You couldn't stay a day, well, say, two days longer?' "'Bless your soul, no. It's not my style. I ain't a man to go fooling round. I'm a man that does things, I tell you.' The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more. Then he looked up and said, "'Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's once?' "'But I see you haven't.' He backed Mr. Likens against an iron fence, button-holed him, fastened him with his eye, like the ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest. "'I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time. Gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man arrived from Tennessee about nine o'clock one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage, and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of. He drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him. But he said, "'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman to wait. Said he hadn't time to take anything to eat. He only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way to the Treasury and fetch the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee, for he was inconsiderable of a hurry. Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up. Said he would collect the claim in the morning. This was in January, you understand, January 1834, the third of January, Wednesday. Well, on the fifth of February, he sold the fine carriage and bought a cheap second-hand one, said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn't care for style. On the eleventh of August he sold a pair of the fine horses, said he'd often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving, and there wasn't so much of his claim, but he could lug the money home with a pair easy enough. On the thirteenth of December he sold another horse, said two weren't necessary to drag that old light vehicle with, in fact one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition. On the seventeenth of February 1835 he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy, said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads anyway. On the first of August he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old sulky, said he just wanted to see those green Tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw him coming a-rippin' along in a sulky, didn't believe they'd ever heard of a sulky in their lives. Well on the twenty-ninth of August he sold his colored coachman, said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky, wouldn't be room enough for two in it anyway, and besides it wasn't every day that Providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate Negro as that, been wanted to get rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to throw him away. Eighteen months later, that is to say on the fifteenth of February 1837, he sold the sulky and bought a saddle, said horseback riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dogged if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself. On the ninth of April he sold the saddle, said he wasn't going to risk his life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made over a rainy, mirey April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe, always had despise to ride on the saddle anyway. On the twenty-fourth of April he sold his horse, said, I'm just fifty-seven today, hail and hearty! It would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that, and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain't anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains to a man that is a man, and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle anyway when it's collected. So tomorrow I'll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-bye to Gatsby's. On the twenty-second of June he sold his dog, said, Dern a dog, anyway, where you're just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure-tramp through the summer woods and hills, perfect nuisance, chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a capering and splattering around in the fords, man can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature, and I'd blame sight rather carry the claim myself, it's a mighty sight safer. A dog's mighty uncertain in a financial way, always noticed it. Well, good-bye, boys, last call, I'm off for Tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning. There was a pause and a silence, except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Likens said impatiently, Well? Riley said, Well, that was thirty years ago. Very well, very well, what of it? I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes every evening to tell me good-bye. I saw him an hour ago. He's off for Tennessee early to-morrow morning, as usual. Said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night owls like me have turned out of bed. The tears were in his eyes. He was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more. Another silent pause. The stranger broke it. Is that all? That is all. Well, for the time of night and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough, but what's it all for? Oh, nothing in particular. Well, where's the point of it? Oh, there isn't any particular point to it. Only if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco with that post office appointment, Mr. Likens, I'd advise you to put up at Gadsby's for a spell and take it easy. Good-bye! God bless you! So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished school teacher standing there, amusing and motionless snow-image shining in the broad glow of the street lamp. He never got that post office. To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about nine hours waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to put up at Gadsby's and take it easy. It is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years, but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long just the same and seems to enjoy it. One may see the fisher loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris. But tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all—the recent dog and the translated cat. CHAPTER 27 I SPARE AN AWFUL BORE Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the Glacier Garden, and it is the only one in the world. It is on high ground—four or five years ago some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. Scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial period. So through their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought and permanently protected against being built upon. The soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered tract which the ancient glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey. This tract was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bedrock, formed by the furious washing around in them of boulders by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. These huge round boulders still remain in the holes. They and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by the long continued chafing which they gave each other in those old days. It took a mighty force to churn these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way. The neighbouring country had a very different shape at that time. The valleys have risen up and become hills since, and the hills have become valleys. The boulders discovered in the pots had travelled a great distance, for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant throne-glacier. For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the Blue Lake Lucerne, and at the piled masses of snow-mountains that border it all around, an enticing spectacle this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun blazing upon it, or the moonlight softly enriching it. But finally we concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on a steamboat, and a dash on foot at Rigi. Very well, we had a delightful trip to Flulin on a breezy, sunny day. Everybody sat on the upper deck on benches under an awning. Everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonderful scenery. In truth a trip on that lake is almost the perfection of pleasuring. The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. Sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake and towered or lofted and overshadowed our pygmy steamer with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive but closed in green and restful and pleasant to the eye, and they were so almost straight up and down sometimes that one could not imagine a man being able to keep his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths, and the Swiss people go up and down them every day. Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards. Then high aloft toward the sky it took a little stronger inclination like that of a mansard-roof. And perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little things like martin-boxes, and presently perceived that these were the dwellings of peasants, an airy place for a home truly. And suppose a peasant should walk in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front yard. The friends would have a tedious long journey down out of those cloud heights before they found the remains. And yet those faraway homes looked ever so seductive. They were so remote from the troubled world. They dozed in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams. Surely no one who has learned to live up there would ever want to live on a meaner level. We swept through the prettiest little curving arms of the lake. Among these colossal green walls, enjoying new delights always, as the stately panorama unfolded itself before us, and re-rolled and hid itself behind us. And now and then we had the thrilling surprise of bursting subtly upon a tremendous white mass, like the distant and dominating Jungfrau, or some kindred giant, looming head and shoulders above a tumbled waist of lesser alps. Once, while I was hungrily taking in one of these surprises and doing my best to get all I possibly could of it, while it should last, I was interrupted by a young and carefree voice. You're American, I think. So am I. He was about eighteen, or possibly nineteen, slender and of medium height, open, frank, happy face, a restless but independent eye, a snub-nose which had the air of drawing back with a decent reserve from the silky newborn mustache below it until it should be introduced. A loosely hung jaw calculated to work easily in the sockets. He wore a low-crowned, narrow-brimmed straw hat, with a broad blue ribbon around it, which had a white anchor embroidered on it in front. Knobby short-tailed coat, pantaloons, vest, all trim and neat, and up with a fashion. Red striped stockings, very low-quarter patent leather shoes, tied with black ribbon, blue ribbon around his neck, wide open collar. Many diamond studs, wrinkleless kids, projecting cuffs, fastened with large oxidized silver sleeve buttons, bearing the device of a dog's face, English pug. He carried a slim cane, surmounted with an English pug's head with red-glass eyes. Under his arm he carried a German grammar, autos. His hair was short, straight and smooth, and presently when he turned his head a moment I saw that it was nicely parted behind. He took a cigarette out of a dainty box, struck it into a Mierscham holder which he carried in a Morocco case, and reached for my cigar. While he was lighting I said, Yes, I am an American. I knew it. I can always tell them. What ship did you come over in? Hulsatia. We came in the Batavia, Cunard, you know. What kind of passage did you have? Tolerably rough. So did we. Captain said he'd hardly ever seen it rougher. Where are you from? New England. So am I. I'm from New Bloomfield. Anybody with you? Yes, a friend. Our whole family's along. It's awful slow going round alone, don't you think so? Rather slow. Ever been over here before? Yes. I haven't, my first trip. But we've been all round, Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year, studying German all the time now. Can't enter till I know German. I know considerable French. I get along pretty well in Paris, or anywhere where they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at? Schweitzerhof. No. Is that so? I never see you in the reception room. I go to the reception room a good deal of the time, because there's so many Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances. I know an American as soon as I see him, and so I speak to him and make his acquaintance. I like to be always making acquaintances, don't you? Lord, yes. You see, it breaks up a trip like this first rate. I never get bored on a trip like this if I can make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to. But I think a trip like this would be an awful bore if a body couldn't find anybody to get acquainted with and talk to on a trip like this. I'm fond of talking, ain't you? Passionately. Have you felt bored on this trip? Not all the time. Part of it. That's it. You see, you ought to go around and get acquainted and talk. That's my way. That's the way I always do. I just go around and round and round and talk, talk, talk. I never get bored. You've been up to the riggy yet? No. Going? I think so. What hotel are you going to stop at? I don't know. Is there more than one? Three. You stop at the Schreiber. You'll find it full of Americans. What ship did you say you came over in? City of Antwerp. German, I guess. You going to Geneva? Yes. What hotel are you going to stop at? Hotel de l'Ecu de Genève. Don't you do it. No Americans there. You stop at one of those big hotels over the bridge. They're packed full of Americans. But I want to practice my Arabic. Good gracious. Do you speak Arabic? Yes. Well enough to get along. Why, hang it. You won't get along in Geneva. They don't speak Arabic. They speak French. What hotel are you stopping at there? Hotel Pension Beaure-Rivage. Oh, you ought to stop at the Schweizerhof. Didn't you know the Schweizerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland? Look at your beta-cur. Yes, I know. But I had an idea there weren't any Americans there. No Americans. Why, bless your soul, it's just alive with them. I'm in the great reception room most of all the time. I make lots of acquaintances there. Not as many as I did at first, because now only the new ones stop in there. The others go right along through. Where are you from? Arkansas. Is that so? I'm from New England. New Bloomfield's my town when I'm at home. I'm having a mighty good time today, ain't you? Divine. That's what I call it. I like this knocking around, loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking. I know an American, soon as I see him, so I go and speak to him and make his acquaintance. I ain't ever bored on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk. I'm awful fond of talking when I can get ahold of the right kind of person, ain't you? I prefer it to any other dissipation. That's my notion, too. Now some people like to take a book and sit down and read and read and read, or moan around yopping at the lake or these mountains and things, but that ain't my way. No, sir. If they like it, let them do it. I don't object, but as for me, talking's what I like. You been up to Rigi? Yes. What hotel did you stop at? Shriver. That's the place I stopped there, too. Full of Americans, wasn't it? It always is. Always is. That's what they say. Everybody says that. What ship did you come over in? Ville de Paris? French, I reckon. What kind of passage did—excuse me a minute—there's some Americans I haven't seen before. And away he went. He went uninjured, too. I had the murderous impulse to harpoon him in the back with my Alpenstock, but as I raised the weapon, the disposition left me. I found I hadn't the heart to kill him. He was such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull. Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting, with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were skimming by, a monolith not shaped by man, but by nature's free great hand, a massy, pyramidal rock, eighty feet high, devised by nature ten million years ago, against the day when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. The time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer bears Schiller's name in huge letters upon its face. Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, and painted all over it in blue letters bigger than those in Schiller's name these words. Try Zosodant. Buy Sun-Stove Polish. Hell bolts vuchu. Try Benzaline for the blood. He was captured, and it turned out that he was an American. Upon his trial the judge said to him, You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is privileged to profane and insult nature, and through her nature's God, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny in his pocket. But here the case is different. As you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your sentence light. If you were a native I would deal strenuously with you. Here an obey. You will immediately remove every trace of your offensive work from the Schiller Monument. You pay a fine of ten thousand francs. You will suffer two years imprisonment at hard labour. You will then be horse-whipped, tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a rail to the confines of the Cantal, and banished forever. The severest penalties are omitted in your case, not as a grace to you, but to that great Republic which had the misfortune to give you birth. The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across the deck. My back hair was mingling innocently with the back hair of a couple of ladies. Presently they were addressed by someone, and I overheard this conversation. You are Americans, I think? So am I. Yes, we're Americans. I knew it. I can always tell them. What ship did you come over in? City of Chester. Oh, yes, Inman Line. We came in the Batavia, Cunard, you know. What kind of passage did you have? Pretty fair. Well, that was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said he'd hardly seen it rougher. Where are you from? New Jersey? So am I. No, no, I didn't mean that. I'm from New England. New Bloomfield's my place. These your children? Blonde to both of you? Only to one of us. They are mine. My friend is not married. Single, I reckon. So am I. Are you two ladies travelling alone? No. My husband is with us. Our whole family's along. It's awful slow going round alone, don't you think so? I suppose it must be. Hi. There's Mount Pilatus coming inside again. Named after Pontius Pilate, you know, that shot the apple off William Tell's head. The guidebook tells all about it. They say, I didn't read it, and American told me. I don't read when I'm knocking round like this, having a good time. Do you ever see the chapel where William Tell used to preach? I did not know he ever preached there. Oh, yes he did. That American told me so. He don't ever shut up his guidebook. He knows more about this lake than the fishes in it. Besides, they call it Tell's Chapel. You know that yourself. You ever been over here before? Yes. I haven't. It's my first trip, but we've been all round Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year, studying German all the time now. Can't enter till I know German. This book's Otto's Grammar. It's a mighty good book to get the Ich habe Gehab Habens out of, but I don't really study when I'm knocking round this way. If the notion takes me, I just run over my little old Ich habe Gehab. Du hast Gehab, Er habe Gehab, wir haben Gehab, ihr haben Gehab, sie haben Gehab. Kind of now I lay me down to sleep fashion, you know, and after that maybe I don't buckle to it for three days. It's awful under mining to the intellect German is. You want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together and you feel them sloshing around in your head same as so much drawn butter. But French is different. French ain't anything. I ain't any more afraid of French than a tramp's afraid of pie. I can rattle off my little G, T, I, I, and the rest of it just as easy as ABC. I get along pretty well in Paris or anywhere they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at? The Schweitzerhof? No, is that so? I never see you in the big reception room. I go in there a good deal of the time because there's so many Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances. Have you been up the riggy yet? No. Going? We think of it. What hotel are you going to stop at? I don't know. Well, then you should stop at the Schreiber. It's full of Americans. What ship did you come over in? City of Chester? Oh, yes, I remember I asked you that before, but I always ask everybody what ship they came over in, and so sometimes I forget and ask again. You going to Geneva? Yes? What hotel are you going to stop at? We expect to stop in a pension. I don't hardly believe you'll like that. There's very few Americans in the pensions. What hotel are you stopping at here? The Schweitzerhof? Oh, yes, I asked you that before too, but I always ask everybody what hotel they're stopping at, and so I've got my head all mixed up with hotels. But it makes talk, and I love to talk. It refreshes me up, so don't it you on a trip like this? Yes, sometimes. Well, it does me too. As long as I'm talking I never feel bored. Ain't that the way with you? Yes, generally. But there are exceptions to the rule. Oh, of course. I don't care to talk to everybody myself. If a person starts into jabber, jabber, jabber about scenery and history and pictures and all sorts of tiresome things, I get the fan-tods mighty soon. I say, well, I must be going now, hope I'll see you again, and then I take a walk. Where are you from? New Jersey? Why, bother at all, I asked you that before too. Have you seen the Lion of Lucerne? Not yet. Nor I, either. But the man who told me about Mount Pilatus says it's one of the things to see. It's twenty-eight feet long. It don't seem reasonable, but he said so anyway. He saw it yesterday, said it was dying then, so I reckon it's dead by this time. But that ain't any matter, of course, they'll stuff it. Did you say the children are yours or hers? Mine? Oh, so you did. Are you going to up the—no, I asked you that. What ship—no, I asked you that, too. What hotel are you—no. You told me that. Let me see. Um, oh, what kind of wha—no, we've been over that ground, too. Um, well, I believe that is all. Bonjour! I'm very glad to have made your acquaintance—ladies, gouten'tac! END OF CHAPTER XXVII. THE YODEL AND IT'S NATIVE WILDS. THE RIGI KURUM IS AN IMPOSING ALPINE MASS, SIX THOUSAND FEET HIGH, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains—a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles in circumference. The ascent is made by rail, or horseback, or on foot, as one may prefer. I and my agent panopled ourselves in walking costume, one bright morning, and started down the lake on the steamboat. We got ashore at the village of Vegas, three quarters of an hour distant from Lucerne. This village is at the foot of the mountain. We were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule path, and then the talk began to flow, as usual. It was twelve o'clock noon, and a breezy cloudless day. The ascent was gradual, and the glimpses, from under the curtening boughs, of blue water and tiny sailboats and beatling cliffs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland. All the circumstances were perfect, and the anticipations, too, for we should soon be enjoying for the first time that wonderful spectacle, an alpine sunrise, the object of our journey. There was, apparently, no real need for hurry, for the guide-book made the walking distance from Vegas to the summit only three hours and a quarter. I say, apparently, because the guide-book had already fooled us once, about the distance from Allerheiligen to Oppenau, and for all I knew it might be getting ready to fool us again. We were only certain as to the altitudes, we calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours it is from the bottom to the top. The summit is six thousand feet above the sea, but only forty-five hundred feet above the lake. When we had walked half an hour, we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking, so we cleared for action. That is to say, we got a boy whom we met to carry our alpine stocks and satchels and overcoats and things for us. That left us free for business. I suppose we must have stopped often or to stretch out on the grass and the shade and take a bit of a smoke than this boy was used to, for presently he asked if it had been our idea to hire him by the job, or by the year. We told him he could move along if he was in a hurry. He said he wasn't in such a very particular hurry, but he wanted to get to the top while he was young. We told him to clear out, then, and leave the things at the uppermost hotel and say we should be along presently. He said he would secure us a hotel if he could, but if they were all full he would ask them to build another one and hurry up and get the paint and plaster dry against we arrived. Still gently chafing us he pushed ahead up the trail and soon disappeared. By six o'clock we were pretty high up in the air and the view of lake and mountains had greatly grown in breadth and interest. We halted a while at a little public house where we had bread and cheese and a quarter or two of fresh milk out on the porch, with the big panorama all before us, and then moved on again. Ten minutes afterward we met a hot red-faced man plunging down the mountain making mighty strides, swinging his Alpenstock ahead of him and taking a grip on the ground with its iron point to support these big strides. He stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief, panted a moment or two, and asked how far to Vegas. I said three hours. He looked surprised and said, Why, it seems as if I could toss a biscuit into the lake from here! It's so close by. Is that an inn there? I said it was. Well, he said, I can't stand another three hours. I've had enough today. I'll take a bed there. I asked, Are we nearly to the top? Why, bless your soul, you haven't really started yet! I said we would put up at the inn, too, so we turned back and ordered a hot supper and had a quite jolly evening of it with this Englishman. The German landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds, and when I and my agent turned in, it was with a resolution to be up early and make the utmost of our first Alpine sunrise. But, of course, we were dead tired and slept like policemen. So when we woke in the morning and ran to the window it was already too late, because it was half past eleven. It was a sharp disappointment. However, we ordered breakfast and told the landlady to call the Englishman, but she said he was already up and off at daybreak, and, swearing like mad about something or other, we could not find out what the matter was. He had asked the landlady the altitude of her place above the level of the lake, and she told him fourteen hundred and ninety-five feet. It was all that was said. Then he lost his temper. He said that, between fools and guide-books, a man could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a country like this to last him a year. Harris believed our boy had been loading him up with misinformation, and this was probably the case, for his epithet, describe that boy to a dot. We got under way about the turn of noon and pulled out for the summit again with a fresh and vigorous step. Then we had gone about two hundred yards and stopped to rest. I glanced to the left while I was lighting my pipe, and in the distance detected a long worm of black smoke crawling lazily up the steep mountain. Of course, that was the locomotive. We propped ourselves on our elbows at once to gaze, for we had never seen a mountain railway yet. Presently, we could make out the train. It seemed incredible that that thing should creep straight up a sharp slant like the roof of a house, but there it was, and it was doing that very miracle. In the course of a couple of hours we reached a fine breezy altitude where the little shepherd-huts had big stones all over their roofs to hold them down to the earth when the great storms rage. The country was wild and rocky about here, but there were plenty of trees, plenty of moss and grass. Away off on the opposite shore of the lake we could see some villages, and now, for the first time, we could observe the real difference between their proportions and those of the giant mountains at whose feet they slept. When one is in one of those villages, it seems spacious, and its houses seem high, and not out of proportion to the mountain that overhangs them. But from our altitude what a change! The mountains were bigger and grander than ever, as they stood there thinking their solemn thoughts with their heads in the drifting clouds. But the villages at their feet, when the painstaking eye could trace them up and find them, were so reduced, almost invisible, and lay so flat against the ground that the exact assembly I can devise is to compare them to ant-deposits of granulated dirt overshadowed by the huge bulk of a cathedral. The steam-boats skimming along under these stupendous precipices were diminished by distance to the daintiest little toys, the sail-boats and row-boats to shallops proper for fairies that keep house in the cups of lilies and ride to court on the backs of bumble-bees. Presently we came upon half a dozen sheep nibbling grass in the spray of a stream of clear water that sprang from a rock wall a hundred feet high, and all at once our ears were startled with a melodious Peeling joyously from a near but invisible source and recognized that we were hearing for the first time the famous alpine yodel in its own native wilds. And we recognized also that it was that sort of quaint co-mingling of baritone and falsetto which at home we call Tyrolese warbling. The yodeling, pronounced yodeling, emphasis on the O, continued and was very pleasant and inspiring to hear. Now the yodler appeared, a shepherd boy of sixteen, and in our gladness and gratitude we gave him a frank to yodel some more. So he yodeled and we listened. We moved on presently and he generously yodeled us out of sight. After about fifteen minutes we came across another shepherd boy who was yodeling and gave him half a frank to keep it up. He also yodeled us out of sight. After that we found a yodler every ten minutes. We gave the first one eight cents, the second one six cents, the third one four, the fourth one a penny, contributed nothing to numbers five, six and seven, and during the remainder of the day hired the rest of the yodlers at a frank apiece not to yodel any more. There is somewhat too much of the yodeling in the alps. About the middle of the afternoon we passed through a prodigious natural gateway called the Fersenter, formed by two enormous upright rocks, with a third lying across the top. There was a very attractive little hotel close by, but our energies were not conquered yet, so we went on. Three hours afterward we came to the railway track. It was planted straight up the mountain with the slant of a ladder that leans against a house, and it seemed to us that man would need good nerves who proposed to travel up it or down it either. During the latter part of the afternoon we cooled our roasting interiors with ice-cold water from clear streams. The only really satisfying water we had tasted since we left home, for at the hotels on the continent they merely give you a tumbler of ice to soak your water in, and that only modifies its hotness, doesn't make it cold. Water can only be made cold enough for summer comfort by being prepared in a refrigerator or a closed ice-pitcher. Europeans say ice-water impairs digestion. How do they know? They never drink any. At ten minutes past six we reached the Kaltbad station, where there is a spacious hotel with great verandas which command a majestic expanse of lake and mountain scenery. We were pretty fagged out now, but as we did not wish to miss the alpine sunrise we got through our dinner as quickly as possible and hurried off to bed. It was unspeakably comfortable to stretch our weary limbs between the cool damp sheets, and how we did sleep, for there is no opiate like alpine pedestrianism. In the morning we both awoke and leapt out of bed at that same instant and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains, but we suffered a bitter disappointment again. It was already half past three in the afternoon. We dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing the other of oversleeping. Harris said, if we had brought the courier along as we ought to have done, we should not have missed these sunrises. I said he knew very well that one of us would have to sit up and wake the courier, and I added that we were having trouble enough to take care of ourselves on this climb without having to take care of a courier besides. During breakfast our spirits came up a little, since we found by this guidebook that in the hotels on the summit the tourist is not left to trust to luck for his sunrise, but is roused, be times, by a man who goes through the halls with a great alpine horn, blowing blasts that would raise the dead. And there was another consoling thing. The guidebook said that up there on the summit the guests did not wait to dress much, but seized a red bed blanket and sailed out arrayed like an Indian. This was good. This would be romantic. Two hundred and fifty people grouped on the windy summit with their hair flying and their red blankets flapping in the solemn presence of the coming sun would be a striking and memorable spectacle. So it was good luck, not ill luck, that we had missed those other sunrises. We were informed by the guidebook that we were now three thousand two hundred and twenty-eight feet above the level of the lake. Therefore full two thirds of our journey had been accomplished. We got away at a quarter-past four p.m. a hundred yards above the hotel the railway divided. One track went straight up the steep hill, the other one turned square off to the right with a very slight grade. We took the latter and followed it more than a mile, turned a rocky corner and came in sight of a handsome new hotel. If we had gone on we should have arrived at the summit, but Harris preferred to ask a lot of questions, as usual, of a man who didn't know anything. And he told us to go back and follow the other route. We did so. We could ill afford this loss of time. We climbed and climbed, and we kept on climbing. We reached about forty summits, but there was always another one just ahead. It came on to rain, and it rained in dead earnest. We were soaked through and it was bitter cold. Next a smoky fog of clouds covered the whole region densely, and we took to the railway ties to keep from getting lost. Sometimes we slopped along in a narrow path on the left-hand side of the track, but by and by when the fog blew aside a little, and we saw that we were treading the rampart of a precipice, and that our left elbows were projecting over a perfectly boundless and bottomless vacancy, we gasped and jumped for the ties again. The night shut down dark and drizzly and cold. About eight in the evening the fog lifted and showed us a well-worn path which led up a very steep rise to the left. We took it, and as soon as we had got far enough from the railway to render the finding it again an impossibility, the fog shut down on us once more. We were in a bleak, unsheltered place now, and had to trudge right along in order to keep warm, though we rather expected to go over a precipice sooner or later. About nine o'clock we made an important discovery, that we were not in any path. We groped around a while on our hands and knees, but we could not find it. So we sat down in the mud and the wet scant grass to wait. We were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted with a vast body which showed itself vaguely for an instant, and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again. It was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice, and decided not to try to claw up it. We sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies, and quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most of our attention to abusing each other for the stupidity of deserting the railway track. We sat with our backs to the precipice, because what little wind there was came from that quarter. At some time or other the fog thinned a little, we did not know when, for we were facing the empty universe and the thinness could not show. But at last Harris happened to look around, and there stood a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been. One could faintly discern the windows and chimneys, and a dull blur of lights. Our first emotion was deep, unutterable gratitude. Our next was a foolish rage, born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been visible three-quarters of an hour, while we sat there in those cold puddles quarreling. Yes, it was the Regiculum Hotel, the one that occupies the extreme summit, and whose remote little sparkle of lights we had often seen glinting high aloft among the stars from our balcony, a way down yonder in Lucerne. The crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the surly reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times, but by mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness and servility we finally got them to show us to the room which our boy had engaged for us. We got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was preparing we loathed forsakenly through a couple of vast cavernous drawing-rooms, one of which had a stove in it. This stove was in a corner and densely walled around with people. We could not get near the fire, so we moved at large in the arctic spaces among a multitude of people who sat silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering, thinking what fools they were to come, perhaps. There were some Americans and some Germans, but one could see that the great majority were English. We lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd to see what was going on. It was a memento-magazine. The tourists were eagerly buying all sorts and styles of paper-cutters marked Souvenir of the Riki, with handles made of the little curved horn of the ostensible chamois. There were all manner of wooden goblets and such things similarly marked. I was going to buy a paper-cutter, but I believed I could remember the cold comfort of the Riki-Kun without it, so I smothered the impulse. Supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed. But first, as Mr. Bedaker requests all tourists to call his attention to any errors which they may find in his guide-books, I dropped him a line to inform him he missed it by just about three days. I had previously informed him of his mistake about the distance from Allerheiligen to Oppenau, and had also informed the Ordinance Department of the German Government of the same error in the imperial maps. I will add here that I never got any answer to those letters, or any thanks from either of those sources, and what is still more discourteous, these corrections have not been made either in the maps or the guide-books. But I will write again when I get time, for my letters may have miscarried. We curled up in the clammy beds, and went to sleep without rocking. We were so sodden with fatigue that we never stirred nor turned over till the blooming blasts of the alpine horn aroused us. It may well be imagined that we did not lose any time. We snatched on a few odds and ends of clothing, cocooned ourselves in the proper red blankets, and plunged along the halls and out into the whistling wind, bare-headed. We saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. We rushed up the stairs to the top of the scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast, outlying world, with hair flying and ready blankets waving and cracking in the fierce breeze. Fifteen minutes too late at last, said Harris in a vexed voice. The sun is clear above the horizon. No matter, I said, it is a most magnificent spectacle, and we will see it do the rest of its rising way. In a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us, and dead to everything else. The great cloud-barred disc of the sun stood just above a limitless expanse of tossing whitecaps, so to speak, a billowy chaos of massy mountain domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and flooded with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors, while through rifts in a black cloud bank, above the horizon, radiating lances of diamond-dust shot to the zenith. The cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted mist which veiled the ruggedness of their crags and ribs and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise. We could not speak. We could hardly breathe. We could only gaze and drunk an ecstasy and drink it in. Presently Harris exclaimed, Why? Nation! It's going down! Perfectly true, we had missed the morning horn-blow, and slept all day. This was stupefying. Harris said, Look here! The sun isn't the spectacle, it's us stacked up here on top of this gallows in these idiotic blankets, and two hundred and fifty well-dressed men and women down here gawking up at us and not carrying a straw whether the sun rises or sets, as long as they've got such a ridiculous spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum books. They seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's one girl there that appears to be going all to pieces. I never saw such a man as you before. I think you are the very last possibility in the way of an ass. What have I done? I answered with heat. What have you done? You've got up at half past seven o'clock in the evening to see the sunrise. That's what you've done. And have you done any better, I'd like to know? I always used to get up with a lark till I came under the petrifying influence of your turgid intellect. You used to get up with a lark. Oh, no doubt. You'll get up with a hangman one of these days, but you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this in a red blanket on a forty-foot scaffold on top of the Alps, and no end of people down here to boot. This isn't any place for an exhibition of temper!" And so the customary quarrel went on. When the sun was fairly down, we slipped back to the hotel in the charitable glooming, and went to bed again. We had encountered the hornblower on the way, and he had tried to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset which we did see, but for the sunrise which we had totally missed. But we said no. We only took our solar rations on the European plan. Pay for what you get. He promised to make us hear his horn in the morning, if we were alive. CHAPTER XXIX He kept his word. We heard his horn and instantly got up. It was dark and cold and wretched. As I fumbled around for the matches, knocking things down with my quaking hands, I wished the sun would rise in the middle of the day, when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and one wasn't sleepy. We proceeded to dress by the gloom of a couple of sickly candles, but we could hardly button anything our hands shook so. I thought of how many happy people there were in Europe, Asia, and America, and everywhere, who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not have to get up and see the riggy sunrise. People who did not appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would get up in the morning wanting more boons of providence. While thinking of these thoughts I yawned, in a rather ample way, and my upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door, and while I was mounting a chair to free myself, Harris drew the window curtain and said, Oh, this is luck! We shan't have to go out at all! Yonder are the mountains in full view! That was glad news indeed. It made us cheerful right away. One could see the grand alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. Fully closed and wrapped in blankets and huddled ourselves up, by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an alpine sunrise was going to look by candlelight. By and by a delicate spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowy wastes. But there the effort seemed to stop. I said presently, There is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere. It doesn't seem to go. What do you reckon is the matter with it? I don't know. It appears to hang fire somewhere. I never saw a sunrise act like that before. Can it be that the hotel is playing anything on us? Of course not. The hotel merely has a property interest in the sun. It has nothing to do with the management of it. It is a precarious kind of property, too. A succession of total eclipses would probably ruin this tavern. Now, what can be the matter with this sunrise? Harris jumped up and said, I've got it. I know what's the matter with it. We've been looking at the place where the sun set last night. It is perfectly true. Why couldn't you have thought of that sooner? Now we've lost another one, and all through your blundering, it is exactly like you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west. It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. You never would have found it out. I find out all the mistakes. You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty would be wasted on you. But don't stop to quarrel now. Maybe we are not too late yet. But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the exhibition ground. On our way up we met the crowd returning, men and women dressed in all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold and wretchedness in their gates and incountances. A dozen still remained on the ground when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffold with their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red guidebooks open at the diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the several mountains and trying to impress their names and positions on their memories. It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw. Two sides of this place were guarded by railings to keep people from being blown over the precipices. The view, looking sheer down into the broad valley eastward from this great elevation, almost a perpendicular mile, was very quaint and curious. Counties, towns, hilly ribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracks, winding streams, a dozen blue lakes, a block of busy steamboats. We saw all this little world in unique circumstantiality of detail, saw it just as the birds see it, and all reduced to the smallest of scales, and as sharply worked out and finished as a steel engraving. The numerous toy villages with tiny spires projecting out of them were just as the children might have left them when done with play the day before. The forest tracks were diminished to cushions of moss, one or two big lakes were dwarfed to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles. Though they did not look like puddles, but like blue teardrops which had fallen and lodged in slight depressions, comfortable to their shapes, among the moss beds and the smooth levels of dainty green farmland. The microscopic steamboats glided along as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart, and the isthmus, which separated two lakes, looked as if one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling across it and finding the distance a tedious one. This beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those relief maps which reproduced nature precisely, with the heights and depressions and other details graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc., colored after nature. I believed we could walk down to Vegas and Fitznau in a day, but I knew we could go down by rail in about an hour, so I chose the latter method. I wanted to see what it was like, anyway. The train came along about the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. The locomotive boilers stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tilted sharply backward. There were two passenger cars, roofed, but wide open all around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were. This enables the passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline. There are three railway tracks. The central one is cogged. The lantern-wheel of the engine grips its way along these cogs and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down-trip. About the same speed, three miles an hour, has maintained both ways. Whether going up or down, the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. It pushes in the one case, braces back in the other. The passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward going down. We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards on level ground, I was not the least frightened, but now it started abruptly downstairs, and I caught my breath. And I, like my neighbors, unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good. I had slid down the balusters when I was a boy and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a railway train is a thing to make one's flesh creep. Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort, but straightway we could turn a corner and see a long, steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause or slack up a little and approach this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind. It went calmly on, and when it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly downstairs untroubled by the circumstances. It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago. There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station. The rail bed was as steep as a roof. I was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed, but it was very simple. The train came sliding down, and when it reached the right spot it just stopped. That was all there was to it, stopped on the steep incline, and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made it moved off and went sliding down again. The train can be stopped anywhere at a moment's notice. There was one curious effect, which I need not take the trouble to describe, because I can scissor a description of it out of the railway company's advertising pamphlet and save my ink. On the whole tour, particularly at the descent, we undergo an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible. All the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent in a slanting direction as by an immense pressure of air. They are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. It is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. Those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they are going down a declivity of 20 to 25 degrees, their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding and being bent down at their backs. They mistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plane, and therefore all the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of 20 to 25 degrees declivity in regard to the mountain. By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he has acquired confidence in the railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holding back. Henceforth he smokes his pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon the magnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. There is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze. It is like inspecting the world on the wing. However, to be exact, there is one place where the serenity lapses for a while. This is while one is crossing the Schnurr-Tobel bridge, a frail structure which swings its gossamer frame down through the dizzy air over a gorge, like a vagrant spider strand. One has no difficulty in remembering his sins while the train is creeping down this bridge, and he repents of them too, though he sees, when he gets defeats now, that he need not have done it, the bridge was perfectly safe. So ends the eventual trip which we made to the Rigi-Kulm to see an alpine sunrise.