The Writings of Mark Twain

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J. t

^iOtst^ ^tatma

THE WRITINGS OF

MARK TWAIN
Volume IV

7C, ^

Mountain climbing

i-' ^y^M . P--'/.w,'..,

A Tramp Abroad

By mark twain

(Samud L. Clemens)

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II

HARTFORD, CONN.
THE AMERICAN PUBLJSH»|^G COMPANY
1908 /

Copyright, 1879 and 1899, by Samubl L. Clbmbns

Plimpton f>re0d

N. M. pLwrroN * CO., printer* * binoms,

HORWOOO, MASS., U.«.A.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PHO TOGRA VURE
MOUNTAIN CLIMBING . . , T, de Thulsirup . Ftonlisfiiece

CLIMBING THE RIPPELBERG . T. d£ Thuhtrvfi . . • 113
THE BfATTERHORN 165

*=> (Hi)

CO

X

TO HEV; YORK
PUBLIC^ LIBRARY

A9TOR. LENOX AND
TILDEN FrUi.DATIUNS
R 1026 L J

» • •• •

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
A Trip by Pkoiy —Visit to the Furka Regions— Deadman's Lake

— Source of the Rhone — Glacier Tables — Storm in the Moon-
tains — Grindelwald — Dead Language — Harris' Report • • 9

CHAPTER 11.
From Lucerne to Interlaken — The Briinig Pass — Hermit Home
of St. Nicholas — Landslides — Children Selling Refreshments

— How thejr Harness a Horse— German Fashions. •••88

CHAPTER HL
The Jungfrau Hotel — A Whiskered Waitress— An Arkansas Bride

— Perfection in Discord — A Famous Victoiy — - A Look from

a Window — About the Jungfrau 37

CHAPTER IV.
The Giesbach Falls— Why People A^t Them— The Kursaal—
From Interlaken to Zermatt on Foot — We took a Buggy —
Companions — Kandersteg Valley — Race with a Log • • • 49

CHAPTER V.
An Old Guide — A Dangerous Habitation — Mountam Flowers —
Mountain Pigs — Chance for Adventure — Ascent of Monte
Rosa— Among the Snows — The Summit 59

CHAPTER VI.
New Interest— Lake Daubensee — Turning Mountain Comers—
Search for a Hat— Hotel desAlpes — Leuk Baths— Gemmi
Ftredpices — Famous Ladders — A Change of Qothing • . 73

(▼)

vi Contents

CHAPTER VII.

Sunday Church Bells — Magnificent Glacier — Ahnost an Accident

— The Matterhom — Zermatt — Home of Mountain Qimbeis

— A Fearful Adventure — Never Satisfied 91

CHAPTER VIII.

Decision to Ascend the Riffelberg — Preparations — Schedule
of Persons and Things — The Advance — The First Accident

— Saved by a Miracle — The Guide's Guide • 107

CHAPTER DC.

Our Expedition Continued — Scientific Researches — A Young
American Specimen — Arrival at Riffelberg Hotel — Ascent of
GomerGrat — Faith in Thermometers — The Matterhom . • 124

CHAPTER X.

Guide Books — Plans for the Return of the Expedition — A Glacier
Train— Parachute Descent —All had an Excuse — The Gla-
cier Abandoned — Journey to Zermatt 141

CHAPTER XI.

Glaciers — Glacier Perils — Inmiense Sze — Traveling Glacier —
General Movements — Ascent of Mont Blanc — Loss of
Guides — Meeting of Old Friends — The Relics at Chamonix . 1 52

CHAPTER XII.
The Matterhom Catastrophe of 1865 — The Matterhom Conquered

— The Descent Commenced — A Fearful Disaster — Death of
Lord Douglas and Two Others 165

CHAPTER Xm.

Switzerland — Graveyard at Zermatt — From St. Nicholas to Visp
— Dangerous Traveling — Chillon — Mont Bliuic and its Neigh-
bors —A Wild Drive — Benefit of Getting Drunk . • • • 173

CHAPTER XrV.
Chamonix — Contrasts — The Guild of Guides — The Returned
Tourist — The Conqueror of Mont Blanc— Professional Jeal-
ousy — Mountain Music — • A Hunt for a Nuisance • • • • 186

Contents vii

CHAPTER XV.

liooking at Mont Blanc —Ascent by Telescope — Safe and Rapid
Return — Diplomas Asked for and Refused — Disaster of 1866
*- First Ascent of a Woman 199

CHAPTER XVI.

A Catastrophe which Cost Eleven Lives — Accident of 1870 — A
Party of Eleven — Kote-books of the Victnns — Within Five
Minutesof Safety— Fadng Death Resignedly 212

CHAPTER XVn.

Hotel des I^nramids —Glacier des Bossons — One of the Shows—
Advice to Tourists — Glacier Toll Collector — Pure Ice Water

— Death Rate — A Pleasure Excursionist 215

CHAPTER XVin.

Geneva — American Manners — GaJlantry — Col. Baker of London

— Arkansaw Justice — Safety of Women in America — Town

of Chambdry — Turin — Insulted Woman — Italian Honesty 225

CHAPTER XIX.

In Milan — Incidents Met With — Children — Honest Conductor

— The Cathedral — Old Masters— Tintoretto's Picture —
Emctionitl Tourists — Basson's Picture — The Hair Trunk • 240

CHAPTER XX.

In Venice — St. Mark's Cathedral — Discoveiy of an Antique —
Riches of St. Mark's — A Church Robber Hanged — Private
Dinner- European Food 254

CHAPTER XXI.

Why Some Things Are — Art in Rome and Florence — The Fig
Leaf Mania — Titian's Venus — Seeing and Describing — A
RealWorkof Art — Titian's Moses — Home 267

viii Contents

APPENDIX.

A.~TbePoitier Analyied 373

B.— Heidelberg Cude Described 378

C— The College Prison and Inmates 384.

D. — The Awfal German Language 290

E.— L^ends of the Castle joS

F.— The Jonmab of Germany 314

A TRAMP ABROAD

CHAPTER I.

AN hour's sail brought us to Lucerne again. I
judged it best to go to bed and rest several
days, for I knew that the man who undertakes to
make the tour of Europe on foot must take care of
himself.

Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I per-
ceived that they did not take in the Furka Pass, the
Rhone Glacier, the Finsteraarhorn, the Wetterhorn,
etc. I immediately examined the guide-book to see
if these were important, and found they were ; in
fact, a pedestrian tour of Europe could not be com-
plete witiiout them. Of course that decided me at
once to see them, for I never allow myself to do
things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way.

I called in my agent and instructed him to go
without delay and make a careful examination of
these noted places, on foot, and bring me back a
written report of the result, for insertion in mv
book.- I instructed him to go to Hospenthal as
quickly as possible, and make his grand start from
there ; to extend his foot expedition as far as the
Giesbach fall^ and return to me from thence by

(9)

10 A Tramp Abroad

diligence or mule. I told him to take the courier
with him.

He objected to the courier, and with some show
of reason, since he was about to venture upon new
and untried ground ; but I thought he might as well
learn how to take care of the courier now as later,
therefore I enforced my point. I said that the
trouble, delay, and inconvenience of traveling with a
courier were balanced by the deep respect which a
courier's presence commands, and I must insist that
as much style be thrown into my journeys as
possible.

So the two assumed complete mountaineering cos-
tumes and departed. A week later they returned,
pretty well used up, and my agent handed me the
following

Official Report

Of a Visit to the Furka Region. By H. Harris^

Agent.

About seven o'clock in the morning, with perfectly
fine weather, we started from Hospenthal, and
arrived at the maison on the Furka in a little under
quatre hours. The want of variety in the scenery
from Hospenthal made the kahkahponeeka weari-
some ; but let none be discouraged ; no one can fail
to be completely recompense for his fatigfue, when
he sees, for the first time, the monarch of the Ober-
land, the tremendous Finsteraarhom. A moment
before all was dullness, but dipas further has placed
us on the summit of the Furka; and exactly in

A Tramp Abroad 11

front of MS, at a hopow of only fifteen miles, this
magnificent mountain lifts its snow-wreathed preci-
pices into the deep blue sky. The inferior moun-
tains on each side of the pass form a sort of frame
for the picture of their dread lord, and close in the
view so completely that no other prominent feature
in the Oberland is visible from this bong-a-bong ;
nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary
grandeur of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent
spurs which form the abutments of the central peak.
With the addition of some others, who were also
bound for the Grimsel, we formed a large xhvloj as
we descended the steg which winds round the
shoulder of a mountain toward the Rhone glacier.
We soon left the path and took to the ice ; and after
wandering amongst the crevasses un peu^ to admire
the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear
the rushing of waters through their subglacial chan-
nels, we struck out a course toward V autre cdt/znA
crossed the glacier successfully, a little above the
cave from which the infant Rhone takes its first
bound from under the grand precipice of ice. Half
a mile below this we began to climb the flowery side
of the Meienwand. One of our party started before
the rest, but the Hitze was so great, that we found
ikm quite exhausted, and lying at full length in the
shade of a large Gestein. We sat down with him
for a time, for all felt the heat exceedingly in the
climb up this very steep bolwoggolyy and then we set
out again together, and arrived at last near the Dead

12 A Tramp Abroad

Man's Lake» at the foot of the Sidelhorn. This
lonely spot, once used for an extemporfe burying
place, after a sanguinary battue between the French
and Austrians, is the perfection of desolation ; there
is nothing in sight to mark the hand of man, except
the line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to
indicate the direction of the pass in the owdawakk
of winter. Near this point the footpath joins the
wider track, which connects the Grimsel with the
head of the Rhone schnawp ; this has been carefully
constructed, and leads with a tortuous course among
and over les pierres, down to the bank of the gloomy
little swosh-swosh^ which almost washes against the
walls of the Grimsel Hospice. We arrived a little
before four o'clock at the end of our day's journey,
hot enough to justify the step, taken by most of the
partie^ of plunging into the crystal water of the
snow-fed lake.

The next afternoon we started for a walk up the
Unteraar glacier, with the intention of, at all events,
getting as far as the HUtte which is used as a sleep-
ing place by most of those who cross the Strahleck
Pass to Grindelwald. We got over the tedious col-
lection of stoneS'and debris which covers the pied of
the GletcAer, and had walked nearly three hours
from the Grimsel, when, just as we were thinking of
crossing over to the right, to climb the cliffs at the
foot of the hut, the clouds, which had for some
time assumed a threatening appearance, suddenly
dropped, and a huge mass of them, driving toward

A Tramp Abroad 15

us from the Finsteraarhorn, poured down a deluge
of haboolang and hail. Fortunately, we were not far
from a very large glacier table ; it was a huge rock
balanced on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit ot
our all creeping under it for gowkarak. A stream of
fuckittypukk had furrowed a course for itself in the
ice at its base, and we were obliged to stand with
one Fuss on each side of this, and endeavor to keep
ourselves chaud by cutting steps in the steep bank
of the pedestal, so as to get a higher place for
standing on, as the wasser rose rapidly in its trench.
A very cold bzzzzzzzzeeeee accompanied the storm,
and made our position far from pleasant; and pres«
ently came a flash of Blitzen^ apparently in the
middle of our little party, with an instantaneous clap
oi yokkyy sounding like a large gun fired close to our
ears ; the effect was startling ; but in a few seconds
our attention was fixed by the roaring echoes of the
thunder against the tremendous mountains which
completely surrounded us. This was followed by
many more bursts, none of welche^ however, was so
dangerously near; and after waiting a long demi-
hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to walk
through a haboolong which, though not so heavy as
before, was quite enough to give us a thorough
soaking before our arrival at the Hospice.

The Giimsel is certainement a wonderful place;
situated at die bottom of a sort of huge crater, the
sides of which are utterly savage Gebirgi, composed
oi barren rocks which cannot even support a single

14 A Tramp Abroad

pine arbrCt and afford only scanty food for a herd
of gmwkwllolpt It looks as if it must be completely
hegraben in the winter snows. Enormous avalanches
fall against it every spring, sometimes covering
everything to the depth of thirty or forty feet; and,
in spite of walls four feet thick, and furnished with
outside iron shutters, the two men who stay here
when the voyageurs are snugly quartered in their
distant homes can tell you that the snow sometimes
shakes the house to its foundations.

Next morning the hogglebumgullup still continued
bad, but we made up our minds to go on, and make
the best of it. Half an hour after we started, the
Regen thickened unpleasantly, and we attempted to
get shelter under a projecting rock, but being far
too nass already to make standing at all agriabU^
We pushed on for the Handeck, consoling ourselves
with the reflection that from the furious rushing of
the river Aar at our side, we should at all events see
the celebrated Wasserfall in grande perfection.
Nor were we nappersocket in our expectation; the
water was roaring down its leap of 250 feet in a
most magnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling
to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the violence
of the hurricane which it brought down with it;
even the stream, which falls into the main cascade
at right angles, and toutefois forms a beautiful feature
in the scene, was now swollen into a raging torrent;
and the violence of this •'meeting of the waters,*'
about fifty feet below the frail bridge where we

A Tramp Abroad IS

stood, was fearfully grand. While we were looking
at it, glilcklicheweise a gleam of sunshine came out,
and instantly a beautiful rainbow was formed by the
spray, and hung in mid air suspended over the
awful gorge.

On going into the chMet above the fall, we were
informed that a BrUcke had broken down near
Guttanen, and that it would be impossible to pro-
ceed for some time ; accordingly we were kept in
our drenched condition for eine Stunde, when some
voyageurs arrived from Meiringen, and told us that
there had been a trifling accident, aber that we could
now cross. On arriving at the spot, I was much
inclined to suspect that the whole story was a ruse
to make us slowwk and drink the more in the
Handeck Inn, for only a few planks had been car-
ried away, and though there might perhaps have
been some difficulty with mules, the gap was cer-
tainly not larger than a mmbglx might cross with a
very slight leap. Near Guttanen the haboolong hap-
pily ceased, and we had time to walk ourselves
tolerably dry before arriving at Reichenbach, wo we
enjoyed a good dini^X, the Hotel des Alps.

Next morning we walked to Rosenlaui, the beau
idial of Swiss scenery, where we spent the middle of
the day in an excursion to the glacier. This was
more beautiful than words can describe, for in the
constant progress of the ice it has changed the form
of its extremity and formed a vast cavern, as blue
as the sky above, and rippled like a frozen ocean.

16 A Tramp Abroad

A few steps cut in the whoopjamboreehoo enabled us
to walk completely under this, and feast our eyes
upon one of the loveliest objects in creation. The
glacier was all around divided by numberless fissures
of the same exquisite color, and the finest wood-
Erdbeeren were growing in abundance but a few
yards from the ice. The inn stands in a charmani
spot close to the c6ti de la riviire^ which, lower
down, forms the Reichenbach fall, and embosomed
in the richest of pinewoods, while the fine form of
the Wellhorn looking down upon it completes the
enchanting bopple. In the afternoon we walked over
the Great Scheideck to Grindelwald, stopping to pay
a visit to the Upper glacier by the way; but we
were again overtaken by bad hogglebutngullup and
arrived at the hotel in solche a state that the land-
lord's wardrobe was in great request.

The clouds by this time seemed to have done
their worst, for a lovely day succeeded, which we
determined to devote to an ascent of the Faulhorn.
We left Grindelwald just as a thunderstorm was
dying away, and we hoped to find guten Wetter up
above; but the rain, which had nearly ceased, began
again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing
froid as we ascended. Two-thirds of the way up
were completed when the rain was exchanged for
gnilliCf with which the Boden was thickly covered,
and before we arrived at the top the gnillic and mist
became so thick that we could not see one another
at more than twenty poopoo distance, and it became

A Tramp Abroad 17

difficult to pick our way over the rough and thickly
covered ground. Shivering with cold we turned
into bed with a double allowance of clothes^ aiad
slept comfortably while the wind howled autour de
la maison; when I awoke, the wall and the window
looked equally dark, but in another hour I found I
could just see the form of the latter ; so I jumped
out of bed, and forced it open, though with difficult
from the frost and the quantities of gnillic heaped
up against it.

A row of huge icicles hung down from the edge
of the roof, and anything more wintxy than the
whole Anblkk could not well be imagined ; but the
sudden appearance of the great mountains in front
was so startling that I felt no inclination to move
toward bed again. The snow which had collected
upon la fenitre had increased the Finstemiss adef
der Dunkelheiti so that when I looked out I was sur-
prised to find that the daylight was considerable,
and that the balragocmah would evidently rise be-
fore long. Only the brightest of les Aoilei were
still shining; the sky was cloudless overhead, though
small curling mists lay thousands of feet below us in
the valleys, wreathed around the feet of the moun-
tains, and adding to the splendor of their lofty
summits. We were soon dressed and out of the
house, watching the gradual appoach of dawn,
thoroughly absorbed in the first near view of the
Oberiand giants, which broke upon us unexpectedly
after the intense obscurity of the evening before.

18 A Tramp Abroad

** Kabaugwakko songwashee Kum Wetter Jiom
stwvopol'' cried some one, as that grand summit
gleamed with the first rose of dawn ; and in a few
moments the double crest of the Schreckhorn fol-
lowed its example ; peak after peak seemed warmed
with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifully
than her neighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn
in the east to the Wildstrubel in the west, a long
row of fires glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy
of the gods. The wlgw was very severe ; our sleep-
ing place could hardly be distinguei from the snow
around it, which had fallen to the depth of zjlirk
during the past evening, and we heartily enjoyed a
rough scramble en bos to the Giesbach falls, where
we soon found a warm climate. At noon the day
before at Grindelwald the thermometer could not
have stood at less than lOO degrees Fahr. in the
sun ; and in the evening, judging from the icicles
formed, and the state of the windows, there must
have been at least twelve dinghlatter of frost, thus
giving a change of 80 degrees during a few hours.

I said :

"You have done well, Harris; this report is
concise, compact, well expressed ; the language is
crisp, the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly
elaborated ; your report goes straight to the point,
attends strictly to business, and doesn't fool around.
It is in many ways an excellent document. But it
has a fault, — it is too learned, it is much too
learned. What is * dinghlatter ' t "

A Tramp Abroad 19

" ' Dingblatter ' is a Fiji word meaning ' degrees '."

"You knew the English of it, then?"

" Oh, yes."

"Whatis*^///iir'/*'

"That is the Esquimaux term for ' snow*."

" So you knew the English for that, too? "

"Why, certainly."

" What does ' mmbglx ' stand for? '

" That is Zulu for ' pedestrian '."

" ' While the form of the Wellhom looking down
upon it completes the enchanting topple.* What is
'boppleT

" • Picture.' If s Choctaw."

" What is ' schnawp ' V

" ' Valley.' That is Choctaw, also."

" What is ' bolwoggoly' V

" That is Chinese for • hill '."

" ' Kahkahponeeka' V

"'Ascent' Choctaw."

" ' But we were again overtaken by bad hoggle*
bumgullup! What does ' hogglebumguUup ' mean ? "

"That is Chinese for 'weather'."

"Is 'hogglebumguUup' better than the English
word? Is it any more descriptive?"

" No, it means just the same."

" And 'dingblatter' and 'gnillic,' and 'bopple,' and
' schnawp,' — are they better than the English words ?' '

" No, they mean just what the English ones do."

"Then why do you use them ? Why have you used
all this Chinese and Choctaw and Zulu rubbish?''

20 A Tramp Abroad

••Because I didn't know any French but two or
three words, and I didn't know any Latin or Greek
at aU."

•' That is nothing. Why should you want to use
foreign words, anyhow?**

•• To adorn my page. They all do it.'*

••Whois^aU'?'*

••Everybody. Everybody that writes elegantly.
Anybody has a right to that wants to.**

•• I think you are mistaken.** I then proceeded
in the following scathing manner. ••When really
learned men write books for other learned men to
read, they are justified in using as many learned
words as they please — their audience will under-
stand them ; but a man who writes a book for the
general public to read is not justified in disfiguring
his pages with untranslated foreign expressions. It
is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers,
for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying,
' Get the translations made yourself if you want them,
this book is not written for the ignorant classes.*
There are men who know a foreign language so well
and have used it so long in their daity life that they
seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their
English writings unconsciously, and so they omit to
translate, as much as half the time. That is a great
cruelty to nine out of ten of the man's readers.
What is the excuse for this? The writer would say
he only uses the foreign langfuage where the delicacy
of his point cannot be conveyed in English. Very

A Tramp Abroad 21

well, then he writes his best things for the tenth
man, and he ought to warn the other nine nor to
buy his book. However, the excuse he offers is at
least an excuse; but there is another set of men
who are likQj^ou; they know a word here and there,
of a foreign language, or a few beggarly little three-
word phrases, filched from the back of the Diction-
ary, and these they are continually peppering into
their literature, with a pretense of knowing that
language, — what excuse can they offer? The foreign
words and phrases which they use have their exact
equivalents in a nobler language, — English; yet
they think they ** adorn their page " when they say
Strasse for street, and Bahnhof for railway station,
and so on, — flaunting these fluttering rags of pov-
erty in the reader's face and imagining he will be
ass enough to take them for the sign of untold riches
held in reserve. I will let your * learning ' remain in
your report; you have as much right, I suppose, to
' adorn your page * with Zulu and Chinese and
Choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to
adorn theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched
from half a dozen learned tongues whose a-h abs
they don't even know."

When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot
shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he
shrivels up. Similar was the effect of these blister-
ing words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting Agent.
I can be dreadfully rough on a person when the
mood takes me.

CHAPTER II.

W/E now prepared for a considerable walk, — from
W Lucerne to Interlaken, over the Briinig Pass,
But at the last moment the weather was so good
that I changed my mind and hired a four-horse car-
riage. It was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy in its
motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable.

We got away pretty early in the morning, after a
hot breakfast, and went bowling along over a hard,
smooth roadt through the summer loveliness of
Switzerland, with near and distant lakes and moun-
tains before and about us for the entertainment of
the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to
charm the ear. Sometimes there was only the width
of the road between the imposing precipices on the
right and the clear cool water on the left with its
shoals of uncatchable fishes skimming about through
the bars of sun and shadow; and sometimes, in
place of the precipices, the grassy land stretched
away, in an apparently endless upward slant, and
was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets, the
peculiarly captivating cottage of Switzerland.

The ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable

(»)

A Tramp Abroad 23

end to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the
home in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its
sheltering eaves far outward. The quaint windows
are filled with little panes, and garnished with white
muslin curtains, and brightened with boxes of
blooming flowers. Across the front of the house,
and up the spreading eaves and along the fanciful
railings of the shallow porch, are elaborate carvings,
— wreaths, fruits, arabesques, verses from Scripture,
names, dates, etc. The building is wholly of wood,
reddish brown in tint, a very pleasing color. It
generally has vines climbing over it. Set such a
house against the fresh green of the hillside, and it
looks ever so cosy and inviting and picturesque, and
is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape.

One does not find out what a hold the chalet has
taken upon him, until he presently comes upon a
new house, — a house which is aping the town
fashions of Germany and France, a prim, hideous,
straight-up-and-down thing, plastered all over on
the outside to look like stone, and altogether so
stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding, and so
out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf
and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surround-
ings, that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a
corpse at a wedding, a puritan in Paradise.

In the course of the morning we passed the spot
where Pontius Pilate is said to have thrown himself
into the lake. The legend goes that after the
Crucifixion his conscience troubled him, and he fled

24 A Tramp Abroad

from Jerusalem and wandered about the earth, weary
of life and a prey to tortures of the mind. Eventu-
ally, he hid himself away, on the heights of Mount
Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and crags
for years ; but rest and peace were still denied him,
so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning
himself.

Presently we passed the place where a man of
better odor was born. This was the children's
friend, Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas. There are
some unaccountable reputations in the world. This
saint's is an instance. He has ranked for ages as
the peculiar friend of children, yet it appears he was
not much of a friend to his own. He had ten of
them, and when fifty years old he left them, and
sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as
possible, and became a hermit in order that he might
reflect upon pious themes without being disturbed
by the joyous and other noises from the nursery,
doubtless.

Judging by Pilate and St. Nicholas, there exists
no rule for the construction of hermits ; they seem
made out of all kinds of material. But Pilate
attended to the matter of expiating his sin while he
was alive, whereas St. Nicholas will probably have
to go on climbing down sooty chimneys, Christmas
eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other peo-
ple's children, to make up for deserting his own.
His bones are kept in a church in a village (Sach-
seln), which we visited, and are natursdly held in

A Tramp Abroad 25 *

great reverence. His portrait is common in the
farmhouses of the region, but is believed by many
to be but an indifferent Jikeness. Duriag his hermit
life, according to the legend, he partook of the
bread and wine of the communion once a month,
but all the rest of the month he fasted.

A constant marvel with us, as we sped along the
bases of the steep mountains on this journey, was, not
that avalanches occur, but that they are not occur-
ring all the time. One does not understand why
rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivi-
ties daily. A landslip occurred three quarters of a
century ago, on the route from Arth to Bmsnen,
which was a formidable thing. A mass of conglom-
erate two miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a
hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three
thousand feet high and hurled itself into flic valley
below, burying four villages and five hundred peo-
ple, as in a grave.

We had such a beautiful day, and such eiidless
pictures of limpid lakes, and green hills and valleys,
and majestic mountains, and milky cataracts dancing
down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we
could not help feeling sweet toward all the world ;
so we tried to <irink all Uie milk, and eat all the
grapes and apricots and berries, and buy afl the
bouquets of wild flowers which the little peasant
hoys and girls offered for sale ; but we had to retire
from thfs contract, for it was too heavy. At short
distances, — and they were entirdy too short, — ali

26 A Tramp Abroad

along the road^ were groups of neat and comely
children, with their wares nicely and temptingly set
forth in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon
as we approached they swarmed into the road, hold-
ing out their baskets and milk bottles, and ran
beside the carriage, barefoot and bareheaded, and
importuned us to buy. They seldom desisted early,
but continued to run and insist, — beside the wagon
while they could, and behind it until they lost
breath. Then they turned and chased a returning
carriage back to their trading post again. After
several hours of this, without any intermission, it
becomes almost annoying. I do not know what we
should have done without the returning carriages to
draw off the pursuit. However, there were plenty
of these, loaded with dusty tourists and piled high
with luggage. Indeed, from Lucerne to Interlaken
we had the spectacle, among other scenery, of an
unbroken procession of fruit peddlers and tourist
carriages.

Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we
should see on the down grade of the Briinig, by and
by, after we should pass the summit. All our
friends in Lucerne had said that to look down upon
Meiringen, and the rushing blue-gray river Aar, and
the broad level green valley; and across at the
mighty Alpine precipices that rise straight up to the
clouds out of that valley ; and up at the microscopic
chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves of those
precipices and winking dimly and fitfully through

A Tramp Abroad 27

fhe drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up> at
the superb Oltschibach and the other beautiful cas-
cades that leap from those rugged heights, robed in
powdery spray, ruffled with foam, and girdled with
rainbows — to look upon these things, they said,
was to look upon the last possibility of the sublime
and the enchanting. Therefore, as I say, we talked
msunly of these coming wonders; if we were con-
scious of any impatience, it was to get there in
favorable season ; if we felt any anxiety, it was that
the day might remain perfect, and enable us to see
those marvels at their best.

As we approached the Kaiserstuhl, a part of the
harness gave way. We were in distress for a mo-
ment, but only a moment. It was the fore-and-aft
gear that was broken, — the thing that leads aft from
the forward part of the horse and is made fast to
the thing that pulls the wagon. In America this
would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, all
over the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope
the size of your little finger, — clothes-line is what it
is. Cabs use it, private carriages, freight carts and
wagons, all sorts of vehicles have it. In Munich I
afterward saw it used on a long wagon laden with
fifty-four half barrels of beer; I had before noticed
that the cabs in Heidelberg used it; — not new rope,
but rope that had been in use since Abraham's time,
— and I had felt nervous, sometimes, behind it when
the cab was tearing down a hill. But I had long
been accustomed to it now, and had even become

28 A Tramp Abroad

a£rakl of the leather strap which belonged in its
place. Our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line
out of his locker and repaired the break in two
minutes.

So much for one European fashion. Every
country has its own ways. It may interest the
reader to know how they *' put horses to" on the
continent. The man stands up the horses on each
side of the thing that projects from the front end of
the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of
gear on top of the horses, and passes the thing that
goes forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and
passes the other thing through the other ring and
hauls it aft on the other side of the other horse,
opposite to the first one, after crossing them and
bringing the loose end back, and then buckles the
other thing underneath the horse, and takes another
thing and wraps it au-ound the thing I ^oke of be*
fore, and puts another thing over each horse's
head, with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out
of his eyes, and puts the iron thing in his mouth
for him to grit his teeth on, up hill, and brings the
ends of these things aft over his back, after bi^dding
another one around under his neck to hold his head
up, and hitching another thing on a thing that goes
over his shoulders to keep his head up when he is
climbing a hill, and then takes the slack of the thing
which I mentioned a while ago, and fetches it aft
and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon,
hands the other things up to the driver to steer

A Tramp Abroad 29

with. I never have buckled up a horse myself, but
I do not think we do it that way.

We had four very handsome horses, and the driver
was very proud of his turnout. He would bowl
along on a reasonable trot, on the highway, but
when he entered a village he did it on a furious run,
and accompanied it with a frenzy of ceaseless whip
crackings that sounded like volleys of mudcetry.
He tore through the narrow streets and around the
sharp curves like a moving earthquake, showering
his volleys as he went, and before him swept a coo*
tinuous tidal wave of scampering children, ducks,
cats, and mothers clasping babies which they had
snatched out of the way of the coming destruction ;
and as this living wave washed aside, along the
walls> its elements, being safe, forgot their fears and
turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant driver
tin he thufidered around the next curve and was lost
to sight.

He was a great man to those villagers, with his
gaudy clothes and his terrific ways. Whenever he
stopped to have his cattle watered and fed with
loaves of bread, the villagers stood around admiring
him while he swa^ered about, the little boys gazed
op at his face with humble homage, and the landlord
brought out foaming mugs of beer and conversed
proudly with him while he drank. Then he mounted
his lofty box, swung his explosive whip, and away
he went again, like a storm. I had not seen any-
thing like this before since I was a boy, and the

30 A Tramp Abroad

stage used to flourish through the village with the
dust flying and the horn tooting.

When we reached the base of the Kaiserstuhl, we
took two more horses ; we had to toil along with
difficulty for an hour and a half or two hours, for
the ascent was not very gradual, but when we passed
the backbone and approached the station, the driver
surpassed all his previous efforts in the way of rush
and clatter. He could not have six horses all the
time, so he made the most of his chance while he
had it.

Up to this point we had been in the heart of the
William Tell region. The hero is not forgotten, by
any means, or held in doubtful veneration. His
wooden image, with his bow drawn, above the doors
of taverns, was a frequent feature of the scenery.

About noon we arrived at the foot of the Briinig
Pass, and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel,
another of those clean, pretty, and thoroughly well
kept inns which are such an astonishment to people
who are accustomed to hotels of a dismally different
pattern in remote country towns. There was a
lake here, in the lap of the great mountains, the
green slopes that rose toward the lower crags were
graced with scattered Swiss cottages nestling among
miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy
ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawling
cataract.

Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and
trunks, arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon popu-

A Tramp Abroad 5I

bus. We were early at the table d'hote and saw
the people all come in. There were twenty-five,
perhaps. They were of various nationalities, but
we were the only Americans. Next to me sat an
English bride, and next to her sat her new husband,
whom she called ** Neddy," though he was big
enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his
full name. They had a pretty little lovers' quarrel
over what wine they should have. Neddy was for
obejring the guide-book and taking the wine of the
country; but the bride said:

" What, that nahsty stuff!"

•• It isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good.'*

•• It « nahsty."

"No, It ««'/ nahsty."

" It's oful nahsty, Neddy, and I shanh't drink it.'*

Then the question was, what she must have. She
said he knew very well that she never drank anyHiing
but champagne. She added :

" You know very well papa always has champagne
on his table, and I've always been used to it."

Neddy made a playful pretense of being dis-
tressed about the expense, and this amused her so
much that she nearly exhausted herself with laugh-
ter, — and this pleased Aim so much that he repeated
his jest a couple of times, and added new and killing
varieties to it. When the bride finally recovered,
she gave Neddy a love-box on the arm with her fan,
and said with arch severity :

•• Well, you would Aave me, — nothing else would

>2 A Tramp Abroad

do, — so yoa'll have to make the best of a bad
bargain. Do order the champagne, I'm i^ful dry.''

So with a mock groan which made her laugh
again, Neddy ordered the champagne.

The fact that this young woman had never mois-
tened the selvedge edge of her soul with a less
plebeian tipple than champagne, had a marked and
subduing effect upon Harris. He believed she be-
longed to the royal family. But I had my doubts.

We heard two or three different languages spoken
by people at the table and guessed out the national-
ities of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but
we failed with an eklerly gentleman and his wife and
a young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentle-
man of about thirty-five who sat three seats beyond
Harris. We did not hear any of these ^peak. But
finally the last-named gentleman left while we were
not noticing, but we looked up as he reached the far
end of the table. He stopped there a moment, and
made his toilet with a pocket comb. So he was a
German ; or else he had lived in German hotels long
enough to catch the fashion. When the elderly
couple and the young girl rose to leave, they bowed
respectfully to us. So they were Germans, too.
This national custom is worth six of the other one,
for export.

After dinner we talked with several Englishmen,
and they inflamed our desire to a hotter degree than
ever, to see the sights of Meiringen from the heights
of Ae Briinig Pass. They said the view was marvel-

A Tramp Abroad 33

ous, and that one who had seen it once could never
forget it. They also spoke of the romantic nature
of the road over the pass, and how in one place it
had been cut through a flank of the solid rock, in
such a way that the mountain overhung the tourist
as he passed by ; and they furthermore said that the
sharp turns in the road and the abruptness of the
descent would afford us a thrilling experience, for
we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to
be spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like a
drop of whisky descending the spirals of a cork-
screw. I got all the information out of these gentle-
men that we could need ; and then, to make every-
thing complete, I asked them if a body could get
hold of a little fruit and milk here and there, in case
of necessity. They threw up their hands in speech-
less intimation that the road was simply paved with
refreshment peddlers. We were impatient to get
away, now, and the rest of our two-hour stop rather
dragged. But finally the set time arrived and we
began the ascent. Indeed it was a wonderful road.
It was smooth, and compact, and clean, and the
side next the precipices was guarded all along by
dressed stone posts about three feet high, placed at
short distances apart. The road could not have
been better built if Napoleon the First had built it.
He seems to have been the introducer of the sort of
roads which Europe now uses. All literature which
describes life as it existed in England, France, and
Germany up to the close of the last century, is filled

34 A Tramp Abroad

with pictures of coaches and carriages wallowing
through these three countries in mud and slush half-
wheel deep; but after Napoleon had floundered
through a conquered kingdom he generally arranged
things so that the rest of the world could follow dry
shod.

We went on climbing, higher and higher, and
curving hither and thither, in the shade of noble
woods, and with a rich variety and profusion of
wild flowers all about us ; and glimpses of rounded
grassy backbones below us occupied by trim chalets
and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses of far lower
altitudes, where distance diminished the chalets to
toys and obliterated the sheep altogether; and
every now and then some ermined monarch of the
Alps swung magnificently into view for a moment,
then drifted past an intervening spur and disap-
peared again.

It was an intoxicating trip altogether ; the exceed-
ing sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner
added largely to the enjoyment; the having some-
thing especial to look forward to and muse about,
like the approaching grandeurs of Meiringen, sharp-
ened the zest. Smoking was never so good before,
solid comfort was never solider; we lay back against
the thick cushions, silent, meditative, steeped in
felicity.

I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. I
had been dreaming I was at sea^ and it was a thrill-

A Tramp Abroad 35

ing surprise to wake up and find land all around
me. It took me a couple of seconds to "come
to," as you may say; then I took in the situation.
The horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of
a town, the driver was taking beer, Harris was
snoring at my side, the courier, with folded arms
and bowed head, was sleeping on the box, two
dozen barefooted and bareheaded children were
gathered about the carriage, with their hands crossed
behind, gazing up with serious and innocent admira-
tion at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun.
Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly
as big as themselves in their arms, and even these
fat babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest
in us.

We had slept an hour and a half and missed all
the scenery! I did not need anybody to tell me
that. If I had been a girl, I could have cursed for
vexation. As it was, I woke up the agent and gave
him a piece of my mind. Instead of being humili-
ated, he only upbraided me for being so wanting in
vigilance. He said he had expected to improve his
mind by coming to Europe, but a man might travel
to the ends of the earth with me and never see any-
thing, for I was manifestly endowed with the very
genius of ill luck. He even tried to get up some
emotion about that poor courier, who never got a
chance to see anything, on account of my heedless-
ness. But when I thought I had borne about enough
of this kind of talk, I threatened to make Harris

36 A Tramp Abroad

tramp back to the summit and make a report on that
scenery, and this suggestion spiked his battery.

We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the
seductions of its bewildering array of Swiss carvings
and the clamorous ^^^-hooing of its cuckoo clocks,
and had not entirely recovered our spirits when we
rattled across the bridge over the rushing blue river
and entered the pretty town of Interlaken. It was
just about sunset, and we had made the trip from
Lucerne in ten hours.

CHAPTER III.

W /E located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one
VV of those huge establishments which the needs
of modern travel have created in every attractive
spot on the continent. There was a great gathering
at dinner, and, as usual, one heard all sorts of
languages.

The table d'hdte was served by waitresses dressed
in the quaint and comely costume of the Swiss peas-
ants. This consists of a simple gros de laine, trim-
med with ashes of roses, with overskirt of sacre bleu
ventre saint gris, cut bias on the off side, with facings
of petit polonaise and narrow insertions of pdt6 de
foie gras backstitched to the mise en scfene in the
form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives to the wearer a
singularly piquant and alluring aspect.

One of these waitresses, a woman of forty, had
side whiskers reaching half way down her jaw. They
were two fingers broad, dark in color, pretty thick,
and the hairs were an inch long. One sees many
women on the continent with quite conspicuous
moustaches, but this was the only woman I saw who
had reached the dignity of whiskers.

(37)

38 A Tramp Abroad

After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed
themselves about the front porches and the orna-
mental grounds belonging to the hotel, to enjoy the
cool air ; but, as the twilight deepened toward dark-
ness, they gathered themselves together in that saddest
and solemnest and most constrained of all places, the
great blank drawing-room which is the chief feature
of all continental summer hotels. There they
grouped themselves about, in couples and threes,
and mumbled in bated voices, and looked timid and
homeless and forlorn.

There was a small piano in this room, a clattery,
wheezy, asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst
miscarriage in the way of a piano that the world has
seen. In turn, five or six dejected and homesick
ladies approached it doubtingly, gave it a single in-
quiring thump, and retired with the lockjaw. But
the boss of that instrument was to come, neverthe-
less ; and from my own country, — from Arkansaw.

She was a brand new bride, innocent, girlish,
happy in herself and her grave and worshiping strip-
ling of a husband ; she was about eighteen, just out
of school, free from affectations, unconscious of that
passionless multitude around her ; and the very first
time she smote that old wreck one recognized that it
had met its destiny. Her stripling brought an arm-
ful of aged sheet music from their room, — for this
bride went ** heeled," as you might say, — and bent
himself lovingly over and got ready to turn the
pages.

A Tramp Abroad 39

The bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from
one end of the keyboard to the other, just to get her
bearings, as it were, and you could see the congre-
gation set their teeth with the agony of it. Then,
without any more preliminaries, she turned on all
the horrors of the "Battle of Prague," that vener-
able shivaree, and waded chin deep in the blood of
the slain. She made a fair and honorable average
of two false notes in every five, but her soul was in
arms and she never stopped to correct. The audi-
. ence stood it with pretty fair grit for a while, but
when the cannonade waxed hotter and fiercer, and
the discord average rose to four in five, the proces-
sion began to move. A few stragglers held their
ground ten minutes longer, but when the girl began
to wring the true inwardness out of the ** cries of the
wounded," they struck their colors and retired in a
kind of panic.

There never was a completer victory ; I was the
only non-combatant left on the field. I would not
have deserted my countrywoman anyhow, but indeed
I had no desires in that direction. None of us like
mediocrity, but we all reverence perfection. This
girl's music was perfection in its way; it was the
worst music that had ever been achieved on our
planet by a mere human being.

I moved up close, and never lost a strain. When
she got through, I asked her to play it again. She
did it with a pleased alacrity and a heightened en-
thusiasm. She made it all discords, this time. She

40 A Tramp Abroad

got an amount of anguish into the cries of the
wounded that shed a new light on human suffering.
She was on the warpath all the evening. All the
time, crowds of people gathered on the porches and
pressed their noses against the windows to look
and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in. The
bride went off satisfied and happy with her young
fellow, when her appetite was finally gorged, and
the tourists swarmed in again.

What a change has come over Switzerland, and in
fact all Europe, during this century. Seventy or
eighty years ago Napoleon was the only man in
Europe who could really be called a traveler; he
was the only man who had devoted his attention to
it and taken a powerful interest in it; he was the
only man who had traveled extensively; but now
everybody goes everywhere; and Switzerland, and
many other regions which were unvisited and un-
known remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our
days a buzzing hive of restless strangers every sum-
mer. But I digress.

In the morning, when we looked out of our win-
dows, we saw a wonderful sight. Across the valley,
and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand,
the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white
into the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer
highlands. It reminded me,' somehow, of one of
those colossal billows which swells suddenly up
beside one's ship, at sea, sometimes, with its crest
and shoulders snowy white, and the rest of its

A Tramp Abroad

41

noble proportions streaked downward with creamy
foam.

I took out my sketch book and made a little
picture of the Jungfrau, merely to get the shape.

I do not regard this as one of my finished works,
in fact I do not rank it among my Works at all; it
is only a study; it is hardly more than what one
might call a sketch. Other artists have done me the
grace to admire it; but I am severe in my judgments
of my own pictures, and this one does not move me.

It was hard to believe that that lofty wooded ram-
part on the left which so overtops the Jungfrau was
not actually the higher of the two, but it was not,

*t!!£J^s^ ^f course* It is only 2,000 or 3,000

feet high, and of

course has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the
Jungfrau ia not much short of 14,000 feet high
and therefore that lowest verge of snow on her side,
which seems nearly down to the valley level, is really

42 A Tramp Abroad

about seven thousand feet higher up in the air than
the summit of that wooded rampart. It is the dis-
tance that makes the deception. The wooded height
is but four or five miles removed from us, but the
Jungfrau is four or five times that distance away.

Walking down the street of shops, in the fore-
noon, I was attracted by a large picture, carved,
frame and all, from a single block of chocolate-
colored wood. There are people who know every-
thing. Some of these had told us that continental
shop-keepers always raise their prices on English
and Americans. Many people had told us it was
expensive to buy things through a courier, whereas
I had supposed it was just the reverse. When I saw
this picture, I conjectured that it was worth more
than the friend I proposed to buy it for would like to
pay, but still it was worth while to inquire; so
I told the courier to step in and ask the price, as if
he wanted it for himself ; I told him not to speak in
English, and above all not to reveal the fact that he
was a courier. Then I moved on a few yards, and
waited.

The courier came presently and reported the price.
I said to myself, ** It is a hundred francs too much,"
and so dismissed the matter froip my mind. But in
the afternoon I was passing that place with Harris,
and the picture attracted me again. We stepped
in, to see how much higher broken German would
raise the price. The shopwoman named a figure
just a hundred francs lower than the courier had

A Tramp Abroad 43

named. This was a pleasant surprise. I said I
would take it. After I had given directions as to
where it was to be shipped, the shopwoman said,
appealingly :

** If you please, do not let your courier know you
bought it."

This was an unexpected remark. I said :

•• What makes you think I have a courier? "

** Ah, that is very simple; he told me himself.'*

* * He was very thoughtful. But tell me, — why did
you charge him more than you are charging me? "

** That is very simple, also : I do not have to pay
you a percentage/'

•* O, I begin to see. You would have had to pay
the courier a percentage."

"Undoubtedly. The courier always has his
percentage. In this case it would have been a hun-
dred francs."

•• Then the tradesman does not pay a part of it, —
the purchaser pays all of it? "

•• There are occasions when the tradesman and the
courier agree upon a price which is twice or thrice
the value of the article, then the two divide, and
both get a percentage."

•'I see. But it seems to me that the purchaser
does all the paying, even then."

•* Oh, to be sure ! It goes without saying."

"But I have bought this picture myself; there
fore why shouldn't the courier know it? "

The woman exclaimed, in distress:

44 A Tramp Abroad

•'Ah, indeed it would take all my little profit!
He would come and demand his hundred francs, and
I should have to pay."

"He has not done the buying. You could
refuse."

*• I could not dare to refuse. He would never
bring travelers here again. More than that, he
would denounce me to the other couriers, they would
divert custom from me, and my business would be
injured." •

I went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. I
began to see why a courier could afford to work for
$55 a month and his fares. A month or two later
I was able to understand why a courier did not have
to pay any board and lodging, and why my hotel
bills were always larger when I had him with me
than when I left him behind, somewhere, for a few
days.

Another thing was also explained, now, apparently.
In one town I had taken the courier to the bank to
do the translating when I drew some money. I
had sat in the reading room till the transaction was
finished. Then a clerk had brought the money to
me in person, and had been exceedingly polite,
even going so far as to precede me to the door and
hold it open for me and bow me out as if I had
been a distinguished personage. It was a new ex-
perience. Exchange had been in my favor ever
since I had been in Europe, but just that one time.
I got simply the face of my draft, and no extra

A Tramp Abroad 45

francs, whereas I had expected to get quite a number
of them. This was the first time I had ever used
the courier at a bank. I had suspected something
then, and as long as he remained with me afterward
I managed bank matters by myself.

Still, if I felt that I could afford the tax, I would
never travel without a courier, for a good courier is a
convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dol-
lars and cents. Without him, travel is a bitter
harassment, a purgatory of little exasperating annoy-
ances, a ceaseless and pitiless punishment, — I mean
to an irascible man who has no business capacity
and is confused by details.

Without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure
in it, anywhere ; but with him it is a continuous and
unruffled delight. He is always at hand, never has
to be sent for; if your bell is not answered
promptly, — and it seldom is, — you have only
to open the door and speak, the courier will hear,
and he will have the order attended to or raise an
insurrection. You tell him what day you will start,
and whither you are going, — leave all the rest to
him. You need not inquire about trains, or fares,
or car changes, or hotels, or anything else. At the
proper time he will put you in a cab or an onmibus,
and drive you to the train or the boat; he has
packed your luggage and transferred it, he has paid
all the bills. Other people have preceded you half
an hour to scramble for impossible places and lose
their tempers, but you can take your time; the

46 A Tramp Abroad

courier has secured your seats for you, and you can
occupy them at your leisure.

At the station, the crowd mash one another to
pulp in the effort to get the weigher's attention to
their trunks ; they dispute hotly with these tyrants,
who are cool and indifferent ; they get their baggage
billets, at last, and then have another squeeze and
another rage over the disheartening business of trying
to get them recorded and paid for, and still another
over the equally disheartening business of trying to
get near enough to the ticket office to buy a ticket ;
and now, with their tempers gone to the dogs, they
must stand penned up and packed together, laden
with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the
weary wife and babies, in the waiting room, till the
doors are thrown open — and then all hands make
a grand final rush to the train, find it full, and have
to stand on the platform and fret until some more
cars are put on. They are in a condition to kill
somebody by this time. Meantime, you have been
sitting in your car, smoking, and observing all this
misery in the extremest comfort.

On the journey the guard is polite and watchful,
— won't allow anybody to get into your compart-
ment, — tells them you are just recovering from the
small-pox and do not like to be disturbed. For the
courier has made everything right with the guard.
At way stations the courier comes to your compart-
ment to see if you want a glass of water, or a news-
paper, or anything; at eating stations he sends

A Tramp Abroad 4;

luncheon out to you, while the other people scramble
and worry in the dining-rooms. If anything breaks
about the car you are in, and a station master pro-
poses to pack you and your agent into a compart-
ment with strangers, the courier reveals to him con-
fidentially that you are a French duke born deaf and
dumb, and the official comes and makes affable signs
that he has ordered a choice car to be added to the
train for you.

At custom houses the multitude file tediously
through, hot and irritated, and look on while the
officers burrow into the trunks and make a mess of
everything; but you hand your keys to the courier
and sit still. Perhaps you arrive at your destination
in a rainstorm at ten at night, — you generally do.
The multitude spend half an hour verifying their
baggage and getting it transferred to the omnibuses ;
but the courier puts you into a vehicle without a
moment's loss of time, and when you reach your
hotel you find your rooms have been secured two or
three days in advance, everything is ready, you can
go at once to bed. Some of those other people will
have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the
rain, before they find accommodations.

I have not set down half of the virtues that are
vested in a good courier, but I think I have set down
a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man
who can afford one and does not employ him is not
a wise economist. My courier was the worst one in
Europe, yet he was a good deal better than none at

48 A Tramp Abroad

all. It could not pay him to be a better one than
he was, because I could not afford to buy things
through him. He was a good enough courier for the
small amount he got out of his service. Yes, to
travel with a courier is bliss, to travel without one is
the reverse.

I have had dealings with some very bad couriers ;
but I have also had dealings with one who might
fairly be called perfection. He was a young
Polander, named Joseph N. Verey. He spoke
eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home
in all of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and
punctual; he was fertile in resources, and singularly
gifted in the matter of overcoming difficulties; he
not only knew how to do everything in his line, but
he knew the best ways and the quickest; he was
handy with children and invalids ; all his employer
needed to do was to take life easy and leave every-
thing to the courier. His address is, care of Messrs.
Gay & Son, Strand, London; he was formerly a
conductor of Gay's tourist parties. Excellent
couriers are somewhat rare ; if the reader is about
to travel, he will find it to his advantage to make a
note of this one.

CHAPTER IV.

THE beautiful Giesbach Fall is near Interlaken,
on the other side of the lake of Brienz, and is
illuminated every night with those gorgeous theat-
rical fires whose name I cannot call just at this mo-
ment. This was said to be a spectacle which the
tourist ought by no means to miss. I was strongly
tempted, but I could not go there with propriety,
because one goes in a boat. The task which I had
set myself was to walk over Europe on foot, not
skim over it in a boat. I had made a tacit contract
with myself ; it was my duty to abide by it. I was
willing to make boat trips for pleasure, but I could
not conscientiously make them in the way of busi-
ness.

It cost me something of a pang to lose that fine
sight, but I lived down the desire, and gained in my
self-respect through the triumph. I had a finer and
a grander sight, however, where I was. This was
the mighty dome of the Jungfrau softly outlined
against the sky and faintly silvered by the starlight.
There was something subduing in the influence of
that silent and solemn and awful presence; one
4«» (49)

50 A Tramp Abroad

seemed to meet the immutable, the indestructible,
the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial and
fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharply
by the contrast. One had the sense of being under
the brooding contemplation of a spirit, not an inert
mass of rocks and ice, — a spirit which had looked
down, through the slow drift of the ages, upon a
million vanished races of men, and judged them;
and would judge a million more, — and still be there,
watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life
should be gone and the earth have become a vacant
desolation.

While I was feeling these things, I was groping,
without knowing it, toward an understanding of
what the spell is which people find in the Alps, and
in no other mountains, — that strange, deep, name-
less influence, which, once felt, cannot be for-
gotten, — once felt, leaves always behind it a restless
longing to feel it agaia, — a longing which is like
homesickness ; a grieving, haunting yearning, which
will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will.
I met dozens of people, imaginative and unimagina-
tive, cultivated and uncultivated, who had come
from far countries and roamed through the Swiss
Alps year after year, — they could not explain why.
They had come first, they said, out of idle curiosity,
because everybody talked about it ; they had come
since because they could not help it, and they should
keep on coming, while they lived, for the same
reason ; they had tried to break their chains and stay

A Tramp Abroad 51

away, but it was futile ; now, they had no desire to
break them. Others came nearer formulating what
they felt : they said they could find perfect rest and
peace nowhere else when they were troubled: aU
frets and worries and chafings sank to sleep in the
presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps ; the
Great Spirit of the Mountain breathed his own peace
upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed
them; they could not think base thoughts or do
mean and sordid things here, before the visible
throne of God.

Down the road a piece was a Kursaal, — whatever
that may be, — and we joined the human tide to see
what sort of enjoyment it might afford. It was the
usual open-air concert, in an ornamental garden,
with wines, beer, milk, whey, grapes, etc., — the
whey and the grapes being necessaries of life to
certain invalids whom physicians cannot repair, and
who only continue to exist by the grace of whey or
grapes. One of these departed spirits told me, in a
sad and lifeless way, that there was no way for him
to live but by whey; never drank anything, now,
but whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey, he didn't
know whey he did, but he did. After making this
pun he died, — that is the whey it served him.

Some other remains, preserved from decomposi-
tion by the grape system, told me that the grapes
were of a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their
nature, and that they were counted out and adminis-
tered by the grape-doctors as methodically as if they

52 A Tramp Abroad

were pills. The new patient, if very feeble, began
with one grape before breakfast, took three during
breakfast, a couple between meals, five at luncheon,
three in the afternoon, seven at dinner, four for
supper, and part of a grape just before going to
bed, by way of a general regulator. The quantity
was gradually and regularly increased, according to
the needs and capacities of the patient, until by and
by you would find him disposing of his one grape
per second all the day long, and his regular barrel
per day.

He said that men cured in this way, and enabled
to discard the grape system, never afterward got
over the habit of talking as if they were dictating to
a slow amanuensis, because they always made a
pause between each two words while they sucked
the substance out of an imaginary grape. He said
these were tedious people to talk with. He said
that men who had been cured by the other process
were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind
because they always tilted their heads back, between
every two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary
whey. He said it was an impressive thing to ob-
serve two men, who had been cured by the two pro-
cesses, engaged in conversation, — said their pauses
and accompanying movements were so continuous
and regular that a stranger would think himself in
the presence of a couple of automatic machines.
One finds out a great many wonderful things, by
traveling, if he stumbles upon the right person.

A Tramp Abroad 53

I did not remain long at the Kursaal ; the music
was good enough, but it seemed rather tame after
the cyclone of that Arkansaw expert. Besides, my
adventurous spirit had conceived a formidable entei
prise — nothing less than a trip from Interlaken, by
the Gremmi and Visp, clear to Zermatt, on foot!
So it was necessary to plan the details, and get
ready for an early start. The courier (this was not
the one I have just been speaking of) thought that
the portier of the hotel would be able to tell us how
to find our way. And so it turned out. He showed
us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could
see our route, with all its elevations and depressions,
its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were
sailing over it in a balloon. A relief -map is a great
thing. The portier also wrote down each day's
journey and the nightly hotel on a piece of paper,
and made our course so plain that we should never
be able to get lost without high-priced outside help.

I put the courier in the care of a gentleman who
was going to Lausanne, and then we went to bed,
after laying out the walking costumes and putting
them into condition for instant occupation in the
morning.

However, when we came down to breakfast at 8
A. M., it looked so much like rain that I hired a
two-horse top-bugg>' for the first third of the jour-
ney. For two or three hours we jogged along the
level road which skirts the beautiful lake of Thun,
with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery expanses

54 A Tramp Abroad

and spectral Alpine forms always before us, veiled
in a mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour set
in, and hid everything but the nearest objects. We
kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and
away from our bodies with the leather apron of the
buggy ; but the driver sat unsheltered and placidly
soaked the weather in and seemed to like it. We
had the road all to ourselves, and I never had a
pleasanter excursion.

The weather began to clear while we were driving
up a valley called the Kienthal, and presently a vast
black cloud bank in front of us dissolved away and
uncurtained the grand proportions and the soaring
loftinesses of the Blumis Alp. It was a sort of breath-
taking surprise ; for we had not supposed there was
anything behind that low-hung blanket of sable
cloud but level valley. What we had been mis-
taking for fleeting glimpses of sky away aloft there,
were really patches of the Blumis' snowy crest
caught through shredded rents in the drifting pall
of vapor.

We dined in the inn at Frutigen, and our driver
ought to have dined there, too, but he would not
have had time to dine and get drunk both, so he
gave his mind to making a masterpiece of the latter,
and succeeded. A German gentleman and his two
young lady daughters had been taking their nooning
at the inn, and when they left, just ahead of us, it
was plain that their driver was as drunk as ours, and
as happy and good natured, too, which was saying

A Tramp Abroad 55

a good deal. TTiese rascals overflowed wth atten-
tions and information for their guests, and with
brotherly love for each other. They tied their reins,
and took off their coats and hats, so that they might
be able to give unencumbered attention to con-
versation and to the gestures necessary for its
illustration.

The road was smooth; it led up and over and
down a continual succession of hills; but it was
narrow, the horses were used to it, and could not
well get out of it anyhow; so why shouldn't the
drivers entertain themselves and us? The noses of
our horses projected sociably into the rear of the
forward carriage, and as we toiled up the long hills
our driver stood up and talked to his friend, ahd his
friend stood up and talked back to him, with his
rear to the scenery. When the top was reached
and we went flying down the other side, there was
no change in the programme. I carry in my mem-
ory yet the picture of that forward driver, on his
knees on his high seat, resting his elbows on its
back, and beaming down on his passengers, with
happy eye, and flying hair, and jolly red face, and
offering his card to the old German gentleman while
he praised his hack and horses, and both teams were
whizzing down a long hill with nobody in a position
to tell whether we were bound to destruction or an
undeserved safety.

Toward sunset we entered a beautiful green valley
dotted with chalets, a cosy little domain hidden

56 A Tramp Abroad

away from the busy world in a cloistered nook
among giant precipices topped with snowy peaks
that seemed to float like islands above the curling
surf of the sea of vapor that severed them from the
lower world, Down from vague and vaporous
heights, little ruffled zigzag milky currents came
crawling, and found their way to the verge of one
of those tremendous overhanging walls, whence they
plunged, a shaft of silver, shivered to atoms in mid-
descent and turned to an airy put! of luminous dust.
Here and there, in grooved depressions among the
snowy desolations of the upper altitudes, one
glimpsed the extremity of a glacier, with its sea-
green and honeycombed battlements of ice.

Up the valley, under a dizzy precipice, nestled
the village of Kandersteg, our halting place for the
night. We were soon there, and housed in the
hotel. But the waning day had such an inviting
influence that we did not remain housed many mo-
ments, but struck out and followed a roaring torrent
of ice water up to its far source in a sprt of little
grass-carpeted parlor, walled in all around by vast
precipices and overlooked by clustering summits of
ice. This was the snuggest little croquet ground
imaginable; it was perfectly level, and not more
than a mile long by half a mile wide. The walls
around it were so gigantic, and everything about it
was on so mighty a scale that it was belittled, by
contrast, to what I have likened it to, — a cosy and
carpeted parlor. It was so high above the Kander-

A Tramp Abroad 57

steg valley that there was nothing between it and the
snow peaks. I had never been in such intimate
relations with the high altitudes before; the snow
peaks had always been remote and unapproachable
grandeurs, hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob, —
if one may use such a seemingly irreverent expres-
sion about creations so august as these.

We could see the streams which fed the torrent
we had followed issuing from under the greenish
ramparts of glaciers ; but two or three of these, in-
stead of flowing over the precipices, sank down into
the rock and sprang in big jets out of holes in the
mid-face of the walls.

The green nook which I have been describing is
called the Gasternthal. The glacier streams gather
and flow through it in a broad and rushing brook to
a narrow cleft between lofty precipices; here the
rushing brook becomes a mad torrent and goes
booming and thundering down toward Kandersteg,
lashing and thrashing its way over and among mon-
ster bowlders, and hurling chance roots and logs
about like straws. There was no lack of cascades
along this route. The path by the side of the
torrent was so narrow that one had to look sharp,
when he heard a cow bell, and hunt for a place that
was wide enough to accommodate a cow and a
Christian side by side, and such places were not
always to be had at an instant^ s notice. The cows
wear church bells, and that is a good idea in the
cows, for where that torrent is, you couldn't hear

58 A Tramp Abroad

an ordinary cow-bell any further than you could
hear the ticking of a watch.

I needed exercise, so I employed my agent in
setting stranded logs and dead trees adrift, and I sat
on a bowlder and watched them go whirling and
leaping head over heels down the boiling torrent.
It was a wonderfully exhilarating spectacle. When
I had had exercise enough, I made the agent take
some, by running a race with one of those logs. I
made a trifle by betting on the log.

After dinner we had a walk up and down the
quiet Kandersteg valley, in the soft gloaming, with
the spectacle of the dying lights of day playing
about the crests and pinnacles of the still and
solemn upper realm for contrast, and text for talk.
There were no sounds but the dulled complaining of
the torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distant
bell. The spirit of the place was a sense of deep,
pervading peace; one might dream his life tran-
quilly away there, and not miss it or mind it when
it was gone.

The summer departed with the sun, and winter
came with the stars. It grew to be a bitter night in
that little hotel, backed up against a precipice that
had no visible top to it, but we kept warm, and
woke in time in the morning to find that everybody
else had left for the Gemmi three hours before, — so
our little plan of helping that German family (prin-
cipally the old man) over the pass, was a blocked
generosity.

CHAPTER V.

WE hired the only guide left, to lead us on our
way. He was over seventy, but he could
have given me nine-tenths of his strength and still
had all his age entitled him to. He shouldered our
satchels, overcoats, and alpenstocks, and we set out
up the steep path. It was hot work. The old man
soon begged us to hand over our coats and waist-
coats to him to carry, too, and we did it; one could
not refuse so little a thing to a poor old man like
that; he should have had them if he had been a
hundred and fifty.

When we began that ascent, we could see a micro-
scopic chalet perched away up against heaven on
what seemed to be the highest mountain near us. It
was on our right, across the narrow head of the
valley. But when we got up abreast it on its own
level, mountains were towering high above on every
hand, and we saw that its altitude was just about
that of the little Gasternthal which we had visited
the evening before. Still it seemed a long way up
in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of
rocks. It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it

(S9)

60 A Tramp Abroad

which seemed about as big as a billiard table, and
this grass plot slanted so sharply downwards, and
was so brief, and ended so exceedingly soon at the
verge of the absolute precipice, that it was a shud-
dery thing to think of a person's venturing to trust
his foot on an incline so situated at all. Suppose a
man stepped on an orange peel in that yard ; there
would be nothing for him to seize ; nothing could
keep him from rolling ; five revolutions would bring
him to the edge, and over he would go. What a
frightful distance he would fall ! — for there are very
few birds that fly as high as his starting-point. He
would strike and bounce, two or three times, on his
way down, but this would be no advantage to him.
I would as soon take an airing on the slant of a
rainbow as in such a front yard. I would rather,
in fact, for the distance down would be about the
same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce.
I could not see how the peasants got up to that
chalet, — the region seemed too steep for anything
but a balloon.

As we strolled on climbing up higher and higher,
we were continually bringing neighboring peaks into
view and lofty prominence which had been hidden
behind lower peaks before; so by and by, while
standing before a group of these giants, we looked
around for the chalet again ; there it was, away down
below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge in
the valley! It was as far below us, now, as it had
been above us when we were beginning the ascent.

A Tramp Abroad 61

After a while the path led us along a railed preci-
pice, and we looked over — far beneath us was the
snug parlor again, the little Gasternthal, with its
water jets spouting from the face of its rock walls.
We could have dropped a stone into it. We had
been finding the top of the world all along — and
always finding a still higher top stealing into view in
a disappointing way just ahead; when we looked
down into the Gasternthal we felt pretty sure that
we had reached the genuine top at last, but it was
not so; there were much higher altitudes to be
scaled yet. We were still in the pleasant shade of
forest trees, we were still in a region which was
cushioned with beautiful mosses and aglow with the
many-tinted luster of innumerable wild flowers.

We found, indeed, more interest in the wild
flowers than in anything else. We gathered a
specimen or two of every kind which we were unac-
quainted with ; so we had sumptuous bouquets. But
one of the chief interests lay in chasing the seasons
of the year up the mountain, and determining them
by the presence of flowers and berries which we
were acquainted with. For instance, it was the end
of August at the level of the sea ; in the Kandersteg
valley at the base of the pass, we found flowers
which would not be due at the sea level for two or
three weeks; higher up, we entered October, and
gathered fringed gentians. I made no notes, and have
forgotten the details, but the construction of the
floral calendar was very entertaining while it lasted.

62 A Tramp Abroad

In the high regions we found rich store of the
splendid red flower called the Alpine rose, but we
did not find any examples of the ugly Swiss favorite
called Edelweiss. Its name seems to indicate that it
is a noble flower and that it is white. It may be
noble enough, but it is not attractive, and it is not
white. The fuzzy blossom is the color of bad cigar
ashes, and appears to be made of a cheap quality of
gray plush. It has a noble and distant way of con-
fining itself to the high altitudes, but that is prob-
ably on account of its looks ; it apparently has no
monopoly of those upper altitudes, however, for they
are sometimes intruded upon by some of the loveliest
of the valley families of wild flowers. Everybody in
the Alps wears a sprig of Edelweiss in his hat. It is
the native's pet, and also the tourist's.

All the morning, as we loafed along, having a
good time, other pedestrians went staving by us
with vigorous strides, and with the intent and deter-
mined look of men who were walking for a wager.
These wore loose knee-breeches, long yarn stock-
ings, and hob-nailed high-laced walking shoes. They
were gentlemen who would go home to England or
Germany and tell how many miles they had beaten
the guide-book every day. But I doubted if they
ever had much real fun, outside of the mere mag-
nificent exhilaration of the tramp through the green
valleys and the breezy heights ; for they were almost
always alone, and even the finest scenery loses incal-
culably when there is no one to enjoy it with.

A Tramp Abroad 6)

All the morning an endless double procession of
mule-mounted tourists filed past us along the narrow
path, — the one procession going, the other coming.
We had taken a good deal of trouble to teach our-
selves the kindly German custom of saluting all
strangers with doffed hat, and we resolutely clung
to it, that morning, although it kept us bareheaded
most of the time and was not always responded to.
Still we found an interest in the thing, because we
naturally liked to know who were English and
Americans among the passers-by. All continental
natives responded of course; so did some of the
English and Americans, but, as a general thing,
these two races gave no sign. Whenever a man or
a woman showed us cold neglect, we spoke up con-
fidently in our own tongue and asked for such
information as we happened to need, and we always
got a reply in the same language. The English and
American folk are not less kindly than other races,
they are only more reserved, and that comes of
habit and education. In one dreary, rocky waste,
away above the line of vegetation, we met a proces-
sion of twenty-five mounted young men, all from
America. We got answering bows enough from
these, of course, for they were of an age to learn to
do in Rome as Rome does, without much effort.

At one extremity of this patch of desolation,
overhung by bare and forbidding crags which hus-
banded drifts of everlasting snow in their shaded
cavities, was a small stretch of thin and discouraged

64 A Tramp Abroad

grass, and a man and a family of pigs were actually
living here in some shanties. Consequently this
place could be really reckoned as ** property"; it
had a money value, and was doubtless taxed. I
think it must have marked the limit of real estate in
this world. It would be hard to set a money value
upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot
and the empty realm of space. That man may-
claim the distinction of owning the end of the world,,
for if there is any definite end to the world he has
certainly found it.

From here forward we moved through a storm-
swept and smileless desolation. All about us rose
gigantic masses, crags, and ramparts of bare and
dreary rock, with not a vestige or semblance of
plant or tree or flower anywhere, or glimpse of any
creature that had life. The frost and the tempests
of unnumbered ages had battered and hacked at
these cliffs, with a deathless energy, destroying them
piecemeal ; so all the region about their bases was a
tumbled chaos of great fragments which had been
split off and hurled to the ground. Soiled and aged
banks of snow lay close about our path. The
ghastly desolation of the place was as tremendously
complete as if Dor6 had furnished the working
plans for it. But every now and then, through the
stern gateways around us we caught a view of some
neighboring majestic dome, sheathed with glittering
ice, and displaying its white purity at an elevation
compared to which ours was groveling and plebeian,

A Tramp Abroad 65

and this spectacle always chained one's interest and
admiration at once, and made him forget there was
anything ugly in the world.

I have just said that there was nothing but death
and desolation in these hideous places, but I forgot.
In the most forlorn and arid and dismal one of all,
where the racked and splintered debris was thickest,
where the ancient patches of snow lay against the
very path, where the winds blew bitterest and the
general aspect was mournfulest and dreariest, and
furthest from any suggestion of cheer or hope, I
found a solitary wee forget-me-not flourishing away,
not a droop about it anywhere, but holding its
bright blue star up with the prettiest and gallantest
air in the world, the only happy spirit, the only
smiling thing, in all that grisly desert. She seemed
to say, "Cheer up! — as long as we are here, let
us make the best of it." I judged she had earned
a right to a more hospitable place; so I plucked
her up and sent her to America to a friend who
would respect her for the fight she had made, all by
her small self, to make a whole vast despondent
Alpine desolation stop breaking its heart over the
unalterable, and hold up its head and look at the
bright side of things for once.

We stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little
inn called the Schwarenbach. It sits in a lonely
spot among the peaks, where it is swept by the
trailing fringes of the cloud rack, and is rained on,
snowed on, and pelted and persecuted by the
6««

66 A Tramp Abroad

storms, nearly every day of its life. It was the only
habitation in the whole Gemmi Pass.

Close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-
curdling Alpine adventure. Close at hand was the
snowy mass of the Great Altels cooling its topknot
in the sky and daring us to an ascent. I was fired
with the idea, and immediately made up my mind
to procure the necessary guides, ropes, etc., and
undertake it. I instructed Harris to go to the
landlord of the inn and set him about our prepara-
tions. Meantime, I went diligently to work to read
up and find out what this much-talked-of mountain-
climbing was like, and how one should go about it,
— for in these matters I was ignorant. I opened^
Mr. Hinchliff' s *• Summer Months among the
Alps" (published 1857), and selected his account
of hia ascent of Monte Rosa. It began :

•* It is very difficult to free the mind from excite-
ment on the evening before a grand expedition "

I saw that I was too calm ; so I walked the room
a while and worked myself into a high excitement ;
but the book's next remark, — that the adventurer
must get up at two in the morning, — came as near
as an3^ing to flatting it all out again. However, I
reinforced it, and read on, about how Mr. Hinchliff
dressed by candle-light and was ** soon down among
the guides, who were bustling about in the passage,
packing provisions, and making every preparation
for the start;" and how he glanced out into the cold
clear night and saw that —

A Tramp Abroad 67

*'The whole sky was blazing with stars, larger
and brighter than they appear through the dense
atmosphere breathed by inhabitants of the lower
parts of the earth. They seemed actually suspended
from the dark vault of heaven, and their gentle light
shed a fairy-like gleam over the snow-fields around
the foot of the Matterhorn, which raised its stupen-
dous pinnacle on high, penetrating to the heart of
the Great Bear, and crowning itself with a diadem of
his magnificent stars. Not a sound disturbed the
deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant
roar of streams which rush from the high plateau of
the St. Theodule glacier, and fall headlong over
precipitous rocks till they lose themselves in the
mazes of the Gorner glacier."

He took his hot toast and coffee, and then about
half past three his caravan of ten men filed away
from the Riffel Hotel, and began the steep climb.
At half past five he happened to turn around, and
"beheld the glorious spectacle of the Matterhorn,
just touched by the rosy-fingered morning, and
looking like a huge pyramid of fire rising out of the
barren ocean of ice and rock around it." Then the
Breithorn and the Dent Blanche caught the radiant
glow; but "the intervening mass of Monte Rosa
made it necessary for us to climb many hours before
we could hope to see the sun himself, yet the whole
air soon grew warmer after the splendid birth of
day."

He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and

68 A Tramp Abroad

the wastes of snow that guarded its steep ap-
proaches, and the chief guide delivered the opinion
that no man could conquer their awful heights and
put his foot upon that summit. But the adventurers
moved steadily on, nevertheless.

They toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed
the Grand Plateau ; then toiled up a steep shoulder
of the mountain, clinging like flies to its rugged
face ; and now they were confronted by a tremen-
dous wall from which great blocks of ice and snow
were evidently in the habit of falling. They turned
aside to skirt this wall, and gradually ascended until
their way was barred by a ** maze of gigantic snow
crevasses," — so they turned aside again, and "be-
gan a long climb of suflicient steepness to make a
zigzag course necessary."

Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a
moment or two. At one of these halts somebody
called out, ** Look at Mont Blanc !" and ** we were
at once made aware of the very great height we had
attained by actually seeing the. monarch of the Alps
and his attendant satellites right over the top of the
Breithorn, itself at least 14,000 feet high !"

These people moved in single file, and were all
tied to a strong rope, at regular distances apart, so
that if one of them slipped on those giddy heights,
the others could brace themselves on their alpen-
stocks and save him from d$irting into the valley,
thousands of feet below. By and by they came to
an ice-coated ridge which was tilted up at a sharp

A Tramp Abroad 69

angle, and had a precipice on one side of it. They
had to climb this, so the guide in the lead cut steps
in the ice with his hatchet, and as fast as he took
his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes of
the man behind him occupied it.

"Slowly and steadily we kept on our way over
this dangerous part of the ascent, and I daresay it
was fortunate for some of us that attention was dis-
tracted from the head by the paramount necessity
of looking after the feet; for^ while on the left the
incline of ice was so steep that it would be impossible
for any man to save himself in case of a slipy unless
the others could hold him upy on the right we might
drop a pebble from the hand over precipices of un^
known extent down upon the tremendous glacier
below.

*' Great caution, therefore, was absolutely neces-
sary, and in this exposed situation we were attacked
by all the fury of that grand enemy of aspirants to
Monte Rosa — a severe and bitterly cold wind from
the north. The fine powdery snow was driven past
us in clouds, penetrating the interstices of our
clothes, and the pieces of ice which flew from the
blows of Peter's axe were whisked into the air, and
then dashed over the precipice. We had quite
enough to do to prevent ourselves from being served
in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then, in
the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick
our alpenstocks into the ice and hold on hard."

Having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat

70 A Tramp Abroad

down and took a brief rest with their backs against a
sheltering rock and their heels dangling over a
bottomless abyss ; then they climbed to the base of
another ridge, — a more difficult and dangerous one
still:

•• The whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow,
and the fall on each side desperately steep, but the
ice in some of these intervals between the masses of
rock assumed the form of a mere sharp edge,
almost like a knife; these places, though not more
than three or four short paces in length, looked un-
commonly awkward; but, like the sword leading
true believers to the gates of Paradise, they must
needs be passed before we could attain to the sum-
mit of our ambition. These were in one or two
places so narrow, that in stepping over them with
toes well turned out for greater security, one end of
the foot projected over the awful precipice on the rights
while the other was on the beginning of the icy slope
on the lefty which was scarcely less steep than the
rocks. On these occasions Peter would take my
hand, and each of us stretching as far as we could,
he was thus enabled to get a firm footing two paces
or rather more from me, whence a spring would
probably bring him to the rock on the other side ;
then, turning round, he called to me to come, and,
taking a couple of steps carefully, I was met at the
third by his outstretched hand ready to clasp mine,
and in a moment stood by his side. The others fol-
lowed in much the same fashion. Once my right

A Tramp Abroad 71

foot slipped on the side toward the precipice, but I
threw out my left arm in a moment so that it caught
the icy edge under my armpit as I fell, and sup-
ported me considerably ; at the same instant I cast
my eyes down the side on which I had slipped, and
contrived to plant my right foot on a piece of rock
as large as a cricket ball, which chanced to protrude
through the ice, on the very edge of the precipice.
Being thus anchored fore and aft, as it were, I be-
lieve I could easily have recovered myself, even if I
had been alone, though it must be confessed the
situation would have been an awful one ; as it was,
however, a jerk from Peter settled the matter very
soon, and I was on my legs all right in an instant.
The rope is an immense help in places of this kind."

Now they arrived at the base of a great knob or
dome veneered with ice and powdered with snow —
the utmost summit, the last bit of solidity between
them and the hollow vault of heaven. They set to
work with their hatchets, and were soon creeping,
insect-like, up its surface, with their heels projecting
over the thinnest kind of nothingness, thickened up
a little with a few wandering shreds and films of
cloud moving in lazy procession far below. Pres-
ently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell 1 There
he dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a
spider, till his friends above hauled him into place
again.

A little bit later, the party stood upon the wee
pedestal of the very summit, in a driving wind, and

72 A Tramp Abroad

looked out upon the vast green expanses of Italy
and a shoreless ocean of billowy Alps.

When I had read thus far, Harris burst into the
room in a noble excitement and said the ropes and
the guides were secured, and asked if I was ready.
I said I believed I wouldn't ascend the Altels this
time. I said Alp-climbing was a different thing from
what I had supposed it was, and so I judged we had
better study its points a little more before we went
definitely into it. But I told him, to retain the
guides and order them to follow us to Zermatt, be-
cause I meant to use them there. I said I could
feel the spirit of adventure beginning to stir in me,
and was sure that the fell fascination of Alp-
climbing would soon be upon me. I said he could
make up his mind to it that we would do a deed
before we were a week older which would make the
hair of the timid curl with fright.

This made Harris happy, and filled him with am-
bitious anticipations. He went at once to tell the
guides to follow us to Zermatt and bring all their
paraphernalia with them.

CHAPTER VI.

A GREAT and priceless thing is a new interest!
How it takes possession of a man ! how it clings
to him , how it rides him ! I strode onward from
the Schwarenbach hostelry a changed man, a reor-
ganized personality. I walked in a new world, I saw
with new eyes. I had been looking aloft at the
giant snow-peaks only as things to be worshiped
for their grandeur and magnitude, and their unspeak-
able grace of form; I looked up at them now, as
also things to be conquered and climbed. My sense
of their grandeur and their noble beauty was neither
lost nor impaired ; I had gained a new interest in the
mountains without losing the old ones. I followed
the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye, and
noted the possibility or impossibility of following
them with my feet. When I saw a shining helmet
of ice projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine
I saw files of black specks toiling up it roped together
with a gossamer thread.

We skirted the lonely little lake called the
Daubensee, and presently passed close by a
glacier on the right, — a thing like a great river

(73)

74 A Tramp Abroad

frozen solid in its flow and broken square off like
a wall at its mouth. I had never been so near a
glacier before.

Here we came upon a new board shanty, and found
some men engaged in building a stone house ; so the
Schwarenbach was soon to have a rival. We bought
a bottle or so of beer here ; at any rate they called
it beer, but I knew by the price that it was dissolved
jewelry, and I perceived by the taste that dissolved
jewelry is not good stuff to drink.

We were surrounded by a hideous desolation.
We stepped forward to a sort of jumping-off place,
and were confronted by a startling contrast: we
seemed to look down into fairyland. Two or three
thousand feet below us was a bright green level, with
a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery stream wind-
ing among the meadows; the charming spot was
walled in on all sides by gigantic precipices clothed
with pines; and over the pines, out of the softened
distances, rose the snowy domes and peaks of the
Monte Rosa region. How exquisitely green and
beautiful that little valley down there was ! The dis-
tance was not great enough to obliterate details, it
only made them little, and mellow, and dainty, like
landscapes and towns seen through the wrong end of
a spyglass.

Right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the
valley, with a green, slanting, bench-shaped top,
and grouped about upon this green-baize bench were
a lot of black and white sheep which looked merely

A Tramp Abroad 75

like oversized worms. The bench seemed lifted well
up into our neighborhood, but that was a deception,
— it was a long way down to it.

We began our descent, now, by the most remark-
able road I have ever seen. It wound in corkscrew
curves down the face of the colossal precipice, — a
narrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one
elbow, and perpendicular nothingness at the other.
We met an everlasting procession of guides, porters,
mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steep and
muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you
had to pass a tolerably fat mule. I always took the
inside, when I heard or saw the mule coming, and
flattened myself against the wall. I preferred the
inside, of course, but I should have had to take it
anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside. A
mule's preference — on a precipice — is a thing to
be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside.
His life is mostly devoted to carrying bulky paniers
and packages which rest against his body, — there-
fore he is habituated to taking the outside edge of
mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing
against rocks or banks on the other. When he goes
into the passenger business he absurdly clings to his
old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always
dangling over the great deeps of the lower world
while that passenger's heart is in the highlands, so
to speak. More than once I saw a mule's hind foot
cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish
into the bottomless abyss ; and I noticed that upon

76 A Tramp Abroad

these occasions the rider, whether male or female,
looked tolerably unwell.

There was one place where an 1 8-inch breadth of
light masonry had been added to the verge of the
path, and as there was a very sharp turn, here, a
panel of fencing had been set up there at some
ancient time, as a protection. This panel was old
and gray and feeble, and the light masonry had been
loosened by recent rains. A young American girl
came along on a mule, and in making the turn the
mule's hind foot caved all the loose masonry and
one of the fence posts overboard ; the mule gave a
violent lurch inboard to save himself, and succeeded
in the effort, but that girl turned as white as the
snows of Mont Blanc for a moment.

The path here was simply a groove cut into the
face of the precipice ; there was a four-foot breadth
of solid rock under the traveler, and a four-foot
breadth of solid rock just above his head, like the
roof of a narrow porch ; he could look out from this
gallery and see a sheer summitless and bottomless
wall of rock before him, across a gorge or crack a
biscuit's toss in width, — but he could not see the
bottom of his own precipice unless he lay down and
projected his nose over the edge. I did not do this,
because I did not wish to soil my clothes.

Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad
places, one came across a panel or so of plank fenc-
ing ; but they were always old and weak, and they
generally leaned out over the chasm and did not

A Tramp Abroad n

make any rash promises to hold up people who might
need support. There was one of these panels which
had only its upper board left; a pedestrianizing
English youth came tearing down the path, was
seized with an impulse to look over the precipice,
and without an instant's thought he threw his weight
upon that crazy board. It bent outward a foot I I
never made a gasp before that came so near suffocat-
ing me. The English youth's face simply showed a
lively surprise, but nothing more. He went swing-
ing along valle}rwards again, as if he did not know
he had just swindled a coroner by the closest kind of
a shave.

The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box
made fast between the middles of two long poles, and
sometimes it is a chair with a back to it and a sup-
port for the feet. It is carried by relays of strong
porters. The motion is easier than that of any
other conveyance. We met a few men and a great
many ladies in litters ; it seemed to me that most of
the ladies looked pale and nauseated ; their general
aspect gave me the idea that they were patiently en-
during a horrible suffering. As a rule, they looked
at their laps, and left the scenery to take care of
itself.

But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led
horse that overtook us. Poor fellow, he had been
bom and reared in the grassy levels of the Kander-
steg valley and had never seen anything like this
hideous place before. Every few steps he would

7S A Tramp Abroad

stop short, glance wildly out from the dizzy height,
and then spread his red nostrils wide and pant as
violently as if he had been running a race ; and all
the while he quaked from head to heel as with a
palsy. He was a handsome fellow, and he made a
fine statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to
see him suffer so.

This dreadful path has had its tragedy. Baedeker,
with his customary overterseness, begins and ends
the tale thus :

•*The descent on horseback should be avoided.
In 1 86 1 a Comtesse d'Herlincourt fell from her
saddle over the precipice and was killed on the
spot."

We looked over the precipice there, and saw the
monument which commemorates the event. It
stands in the bottom of the gorge, in a place which
has been hollowed out of the rock to protect it from
the torrent and the storms. Our old guide never
spoke but when spoken to, and then limited himself
to a syllable or two, but when we asked him about
this tragedy he showed a strong interest in the
matter. He said the Countess was very pretty,
and very young, — hardly out of her girlhood, in
fact. She was newly married, and was on her bridal
tour. The young husband was riding a little in
advance; one guide was leading the husband's
horse, another was leading the bride's. The old
man continued :

" The guide that was leading the husband's horse

A Tramp Abroad 79

happened to glance back, and there was that poor
young thing sitting up staring out over the precipice ;
and her face began to bend downward a little, and
she put up her two hands slowly and met it, — so,
— and put them flat against her eyes, — so, — and
then she sunk out of the saddle, with a sharp shriek,
and one caught only the flash of a dress, and it was
all over."

Then after a pause :

"Ah, yes, that guide saw these things, — yes, he
saw them all. He saw them all, just as I have told
you."

After another pause :

••Ah, yes, he saw them all, Bly God, that was
me, I was that guide ! "

This had been the one event of the old man's life;
so one may be sure he had forgotten no detail con-
nected with it. We listened to all he had to say
about what was done and what happened and what
was said after the sorrowful occurrence, and a pain-
ful story it was.

When we had wound down toward the valley until
we were about on the last spiral of the corkscrew,
Harris's hat blew over the last reniaining bit of pre-
cipice, — a small cliff a hundred or hundred and fifty
feet high, — and sailed down towards a steep slant
composed of rough chips and fragments which the
weather had flaked away from the precipices. We
went leisurely down there, expecting to find it with-
out any trouble, but we had made a mistake, as to

80 A Tramp Abroad

that. We hunted during a couple of hours, — not
because the old straw hat was valuable, but out of
curiosity to find out how such a thing could manage
to conceal itself in open ground where there was noth-
ing left for it to hide behind. When one is reading
in bed, and lays his paper-knife down, he cannot find
it again if it is smaller than a sabre ; that hat was as
stubborn as any paper-knife could have been, and we
finally had to give it up ; but we found a fragment
that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by
digging around and turning over the rocks we
gradually collected all the lenses and the cylinders
and the various odds and ends that go to make up a
complete opera-glass. We afterwards had the thing
reconstructed, and the owner can have his adventur-
ous long-lost property by submitting proofs and pay-
ing costs of rehabilitation. We had hopes of finding
the owner there', distributed around amongst the
rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph ;
but we were disappointed. Still, we were far from
being disheartened, for there was a considerable area
which we had not thoroughly searched; we were
satisfied he was there, somewhere, so we resolved to
wait over a day at Leuk and come back and get him.
Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration
and arrange about what we would do with him when
we got him. Harris was for contributing him to the
British Museum ; but I was for mailing him to his
widow. That is the difference between Harris and
me : Harris is all for display, I am all for the simple

A Tramp Abroad 81

right, even though I lose money by it. Harris
argued in favor of his proposition and against mine,
I argued in favor of mine and against his. The dis-
cussion warmed into a dispute ; the dispute warmed
into a quarrel. I finally said, very decidedly:

** My mind is made up. He goes to the widow."

Harris answered, sharply :

**And my mind is made up. He goes to the
Museum."

I said, calmly:

'• The Museum may whistle when it gets him."

Harris retorted :

•*The widow may save herself the trouble of
whistling, for I will see that she never gets him."

After some angry bandying of epithets, I
said:

•* It seems to me that you are taking on a good
many airs about these remains. I don't quite see
^h2^. you've got to say about them? "

"/.^ Fve got all to say about them. They'd
never have been thought of if I hadn't found their
opera-glass. The corpse belongs to me, and I'll do
as I please with him."

I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries
achieved by it naturally belonged to me. I was en-
titled to these remains, and could have enforced my
right; but rather than have bad blood about the
matter, I said we would toss up for them. I threw
heads and won, but it was a barren victory, for
although we spent all the next day searching, we

82 A Tramp Abroaa

never found a bone. I cannot imagine what could
ever have become of that fellow.

The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leuker-
bad. We pointed our course toward it, down a ver-
dant slope which was adorned with fringed gentians
and other flowers, and presently entered the narrow
alleys of the outskirts and waded toward the middle
of the town through • liquid "fertilizer." They
ought to either pave that village or organize a ferry.

Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture ; his
person was populous with the little hungry pests ;
his skin, when he stripped, was splotched like a
scarlet fever patient's; so, when we were about to
enter one of the Leukerbad inns, and he noticed its
sign, •* Chamois. Hotel," he refused to stop there.
He said the chamois was plentiful enough, without
hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it.
I was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that
will neither bite me nor abide with me : but to calm
Harris, we went to the H6tel des Alpes.

At the table d'h6te we had this, for an incident.
A very grave man, — in fact his gravity amounted
to solemnity, and almost to austerity, — sat oppo-
site iis and he was '* tight/' but doing his best to
appear sober. He took up a corked bottle of wine,
tilted it over his glass awhile, then sat it out of the
way, with a contented look, and went on with his
dinner.

Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of
course found it empty. He looked puzzled, and

A Tramp Abroad 83

glanced furtively and suspiciously out oi the corner
of his eye at a benignant and unconscious old lady
who sat at his right. Shook his head, as much as to
say, **No, she couldn't have done it.'! He tilted
the corked bottle over his glass again, meantime
searching around with his watery eye to see if any-
body was watching him. He ate a few mouthfuls,
raised his glass to his lips, and of course it was still
empty. He bent an injured and accusing side gaze
upon that unconscious old lady, which was a study
to see. She went on eating and gave no sign. He
took up his glass and his bottle, with a wise private
nod of his head, and set them gravely on the left
hand side of his plate, — poured himself another
imaginary drink, — went to work with his knife and
fork once more, — presently lifted his glass with
good confidence, and found it empty, as usual.

This was almost a petrifying surprise. He straight-
ened himself up in his chair and deliberately and sor-
rowfully inspected the busy old ladies at his elbows,
fiirst one and then the other. At last he softly pushed
his plate away, set his glass directly in front of him,
held on to it with his left hand, and proceeded to
pour with his right. This time he observed that
nothing came. He turned the bottle clear upside
down ; still nothing issued from it ; a plaintive look
came into his face, and he said, as if to himself,
•• 'id They've got it all! " Then he set the bottle
down, resignedly, and took the rest of his dinner
dry.

84 A Tramp Abroad

It was at that table d'hdte, too, that I had under
inspection the largest lady I have ever seen in private
life. She was over seven feet high, and mag-
nificently proportioned. What had first called my
attention to her, was my stepping on an outlying
fiange of her foot, and hearing, from up toward the
ceiling, adeep ** Pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach ! **

That was when we were coming through the hall,
and the place was dim, and I could see her only
vaguely. The thing which called my attention to
her the second time was, that at a table beyond
ours were two very pretty girls, and this great lady
came in and sat down between them and me and
blotted out the view. She had a handsome face,
and she was very finely formed, — perfectly formed,
I should say. But she made everybody around her
look trivial and commonplace. Ladies near her
looked like children, and the men about her looked
mean. They looked like failures; and they looked
as if they felt so, too. She sat with her back to us.
I never saw such a back in my life. I would have
so liked to see the moon rise over it. The whole
congregation waited, under one pretext or another,
till she finished her dinner and went out; they
wanted to see her at her full altitude, and they found
it worth tarrying for. She filled one's idea of what
an empress ought to be, when she rose up in her
unapproachable grandeur and moved superbly out
of that place.

We were not at Leuk in time to see her at her

A Tramp Abroad 85

heaviest weight. She had suffered from corpulence
and had come there to get rid of her extra flesh in
the baths. Five weeks of soaking, — five uninter-
rupted hours of it every day, — had accomplished
her purpose and reduced her to the right proportions.

Those baths remove fat, and also skin diseases.
The patients remain in the great tanks for hours
at a time. A dozen gentlemen and ladies occupy
a tank together, and amuse themselves with romp-
ings and various games. They have floating desks
and tables, and they read or lunch or play chess in
water that is breast deep. The tourist can step in
and view this novel spectacle if he chooses. There's
a poor-box, and he will have to contribute. There
are several of these big bathing houses, and you
can always tell when you are near one of them by
the romping noises and shouts of laughter that pro-
ceed from it. The water is running water, and
changes all the time, else a patient with a ringworm
might take the bath with only a partial success, since,
while he was ridding himself of his ringworm, he
might catch the itch.

The next morning we wandered back up the green
valley, leisurely, with the curving walls of those bare
and stupendous precipices rising into the clouds be-
fore us. I had never seen a clean, bare precipice
stretching up five thousand feet above me before,
and I never shall expect to see another one. They
exist, perhaps, but not in places where one can easily
get close to them. This pile of stone is peculiar.

86 A Tramp Abroad

From its base to the soaring tops of its mighty
towers, all its lines and all its details vaguely suggest
human architecture. There are rudimentary bow
windows, cornices, chimneys, demarcations of
stories, etc. One could sit and stare up there and
study the features and exquisite graces of this grand
structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never
weary his interest. The termination, toward the
town, observed in profile, is the perfection of shape.
It comes down out of the clouds in a succession of
rounded, colossal, terrace-like projections, — a stair-
way for the gods ; at its head spring several lofty
storm-scarred towers, one above another, with faint
films of vapor curling always about them like spectral
banners. If there were a king whose realms in-
cluded the whole world, here would be the palace
meet and proper for such a monarch. He would
only need to hollow it out and put in the electric
light. He could give audience to a nation at a time
under its roof.

Our search for those remains having failed, we
inspected with a glass the dim and distant track of
an old-time avalanche that once swept down from
some pine-grown summits behind the town and
swept away the houses and buried the people ; then
we struck down the road that leads toward the
Rhone, to see the famous Ladders. These perilous
things are built against the perpendicular face of a
cliff two or three hundred feet high. The peasants,
of both sexes, were climbing up and down them,

A Tramp Abroad 87

with heavy loads on their backs. I ordered Harris
to make the ascent, so I could put the thrill and
horror of it in my book, and he accomplished the
feat successfully, through a sub-agent, for three
francs, which I paid. It makes me shudder yet
when I think of what I felt when I was clinging
there between heaven and earth in the person of
that proxy. At times the world swam around me,
and I could hardly keep from letting go, so dizzying
was the appalling danger. Many a person would
have given up and descended, but I stuck to my
task, and would not yield until I had accomplished
it. I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would
not have repeated it for the wealth of the world. I
shall break my neck yet with some such foolhardy
performance, for warnings never seem to have any
lasting effect upon me. When the people of the
hotel found that I had been climbing those crazy
Ladders, it made me an object of considerable
attention.

Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone val-
ley and took the train for Visp. There we shoul-
dered our knapsacks and things, and set out on foot,
in a tremendous rain, up the winding gorge, toward
Zermatt. Hour after hour we slopped along, by
the roaring torrent, and under noble Lesser Alps
which were clothed in rich velvety green all the way
up and had little atomy Swiss homes perched upon
grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights.

The rain continued to pour and the torrent to

88 A Tramp Abroad

boom, and we continued to enjoy both. At the one
spot where this torrent tossed its white mane
highest, and thundered loudest, and lashed the big
bowlders fiercest, the canton had done itself the
honor to build the flimsiest wooden bridge that
exists in the world. While we were walking over it,
along with a party of horsemen, I noticed that even
the larger raindrops made it shake. I called
Harris's attention to it, and he noticed it, too. It
seemed to me that if I owned an elephant that was a
keepsake, and I thought a good deal of him, I would
think twice before I would ride him over that bridge.
We climbed up to the village of St. Nicholas, about
half past four in the afternoon, waded ankle deep
through the fertilizer- juice, and stopped at a new
and nice hotel close by the little church. We
stripped and went to bed, and sent our clothes
down to be baked. All the horde of soaked tourists
did the same. That chaos of clothing got mixed in
the kitchen, and there were consequences. I did
not get back the same drawers I sent down, when
our things came up at 6.1$; I got a pair on a new
plan. They were merely a pair of white ruffle-
cuffed absurdities, hitched together at the top with
a narrow band, and they did not come quite down to
my knees. They were pretty enough, but they
made me feel like two people, and disconnected at
that. The man must have been an idiot that got
himself up like that, to rough it in the Swiss moun-
tains. The shirt they brought me was shorter than

A Tramp Abroad 89

the drawers, and hadn't any sleeves to it, — at least
it hadn't anything more than what Mr. Darwin
would call ** rudimentary " sleeves; these had
••edging" around them, but the bosom was ridicu-
lously plain. The knit silk undershirt they brought
me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing ;
it opened behind, and had pockets in it* to put your
shoulder blades in; but they did not seem to fit
mine, and so I found it a sort of uncomfortable
garment. They gave my bob-tail coat to somebody
else, and sent me an ulster suitable for a giraffe. I
had to tie my collar on, because there was no button
behind on that foolish little shirt which I described
a while ago.

When I was dressed for dinner at 6.30, I was too
loose in some places and too tight in others, and
altogether I felt slovenly and ill conditioned. How-
ever, the people at the table d'h6te were no better
off than I was; they had everybody's clothes but
their own on. A long stranger recognized his ulster as
soon as he saw the tail of it following me in, but
nobody claimed my shirt or my drawers, though I
described them as well as I was able. I gave them
to the chambermaid that night when I went to bed,
and she probably found the owner, for my own
things were on a chair outside my door in the
morning.

There was a lovable English clergyman who did
not get to the table d'hdte at all. His breeches had
turned up missing, and without any equivalent. He

90 A Tramp Abroad

said he was not more particular than other people,
but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinnei
without any breeches was almost sure to excite
remark.

CHAPTER VII.

VV/E did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The
VV church bell began to ring at 4.30 in the
morning, and from the length of time it continued
to ring I judged that it takes the Swiss sinner a
good while to get the invitation through his head.
Most church bells in the world are of poor quality,
and have a harsh and rasping sound which upsets
the temper and produces much sin, but the St.
Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one that has
been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening in
its operation. Still, it may have its right and its ex-
cuse to exist, for the community is poor and not
every citizen can afford a clock, perhaps ; but there
cannot be any excuse for our church bells at home,
for there is no family in America without a clock,
and consequently there is no fair pretext for the
usual Sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues
from our steeples. There is much more profanity
in America on Sunday than in all the other six days
of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter
and malignant character than the week-day pro-
fanity, too. It is produced by the cracked-pot
clangor of the cheap church bells.

(91)

92 A Tramp Abroad

We build our churches almost without regard to
cost ; we rear an edifice which is an adornment to
the town, and we gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage
it, and do everything we can think of to perfect it,
and then spoil it all by putting a bell on it which
afflicts everybody who hears it, giving some the
headache, others St. Vitus's dance, and the rest the
blind staggers.

An American village at ten o'clock on a summer
Sunday is the quietest and peacefulest and holiest
thing in nature; but it is a pretty different thing
half an hour later. Mr. Poe*s poem of the ** Bells "
stands incomplete to this day ; but it is well enough
that it is so, for the public reciter or ** reader *' who
goes around trying to imitate the sounds of the
various sorts of bells with his voice would find him-
self •* up a stump *' when he got to the church bell
— as Joseph Addison would say. The church is
always trying to get other people to reform; it
might not be. a bad idea to reform itself a little, by
way of example. It is still clinging to one or two
things which were useful once, but which are not
useful now, neither are they ornamental. One is the
bell ringing to remind a clock-caked town that it is
church time, and another is the reading from the
pulpit of a tedious list of * 'notices'* which every-
body who is interested has already read in the news-
paper. The clergyman even reads the hymn
through, — a relic of an ancient time when hymn
books were scarce and costly; but everybody has

A Tramp Abroad 93

a hymn book, now, and so the public reading is no
longer necessary. It is not merely unnecessary, it
is generally painful; for the average clergyman
could not fire into his congregation with a shotgun
and hit a worse reader than himself, unless the
weapon scattered shamefully. I am not meaning to
be flippant and irreverent, I am only meaning to be
truthful. The average clergyman, in all countries
and of all denominations, is a very bad reader.
One would think he would at least learn how to read
the Lord's Prayer, by and by, but it is not so.
He races through it as if he thought the quicker he
got it in, the sooner it would be answered. A
person who does not appreciate the exceeding value
of pauses, and does not know how to measure their
duration judiciously, cannot render the grand sim-
plicity and dignity of a composition like that effect-
ively.

We took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped
off toward Zermatt through the reeking lanes of the
village, glad to get away from that bell. By and by
we had a fine spectacle on our right. It was the wall-
like butt end of a huge glacier, which looked down
on us from an Alpine height which was well up in
the blue sky. It was an astonishing amount of ice
to be compacted together in one mass. We ciphered
upon it and decided that it was not less than several
hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid ice
to the top of it, — Harris believed it was really twice
that. We judged that if St. Paul's, St. Peter's, the

94 A Tramp Abroad

Great Pyramid, the Strasburg Cathedral and the
Capitol at Washington were clustered against that
wall, a man sitting on its upper edge could not hang
his hat on the top of any one of them without reach-
ing down three or four hundred feet, — a thing
which, of course, no man could do.

To me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful.
I did not imagine that anybody could find fault with
it; but I was mistaken. Harris had been snarling
for several days. He was a rabid Protestant, and
he was always saying :

** In the Protestant cantons you never see such
poverty and dirt and squalor as you do in this
Catholic one;, you never see the lanes and alleys
flowing with foulness ; you never see such wretched
little sties of houses ; you never see an inverted tin
turnip on top of a church for a dome ; and as for a
church bell, why, you never hear a church bell at all. ' '

All this morning he had been finding fault, straight
along. First it was with the mud. He said, **It
ain't muddy in a Protestant canton when it rains."
Then it was with the dogs: **They don't have
those lop-eared dogs in a Protestant canton." Then
it was with the roads : * * They don't leave the roads
to make themselves in a Protestant canton, the
people make them, — and they make a road that is
a road, too." Next it was the goats: **You
never see a goat shedding tears in a Protestant
canton — a goat, there, is one of the cheerfulest
objects in nature." Next it was the chamois:

A Tramp Abroad 95

'* You never see a Protestant chamois act like one of
these, — they take a bite or two and go; but these
fellows camp with you and stay." Then it was
the guideboards: "In a Protestant canton you
couldn't get lost if you wanted to, but you never
see a guideboard in a Catholic canton." Next,
** You never see any flower boxes in the windows,
here, — never anything but now and then a cat, — a
torpid one; but you take a Protestant canton:
windows perfectly lovely with flowers, — and as for
cats, there's just acres of them. These folks in this
canton leave a road to make itself, and then flne you
three francs if you *trot' over it — as if a horse
could trot over such a sarcasm of a road." Next
about the goitre: ^^ They talk about goitre! — I
haven't seen a goitre in this whole canton that I
couldn't put in a hat."

He had growled at everything, but I judged it
would puzzle him to find anything the matter with
this majestic glacier. I intimated as much ; but he
was ready, and said with surly discontent: **You
ought to see them in the Protestant cantons."

This irritated me. But I concealed the feeling,
and asked :

** What is the matter with this one? "

*• Matter? Why, it ain't in any kind of condition.
They never take any care of a glacier here. The
moraine has been spilling gravel around it, and got
it all dirty."

•* Why, man, they can't help that."

96 A Tramp Abroad

•• They t You're right. That is, they won't.
They could if they wanted to. You never see a
speck of dirt on a Protestant glacier. Look at the
Rhone glacier. It is fifteen miles long, and seven
hundred feet thick. If this was a Protestant glacier
you wouldn't see it looking like this, I can tell you."

*'That is nonsense. What would they do with
it?"

••They would whitewash it. They always do.*'

I did not believe a word of this, but rather than
have trouble I let it go ; for it is a waste of breath
to argue with a bigot. I even doubted if the Rhone
glacier was in a Protestant canton; but I did not
know, so I could not make anything by contradict-
ing a man who would probably put me down at once
with manufactured evidence.

About nine miles from St. Nicholas we crossed a
bridge over the raging torrent of the Visp, and came
to a long strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending
to secure people from tumbling over a perpendicular
wall forty feet high and into the river. Three
children were approaching; one of them, a little girl,
about eight years old, was running; when pretty
close to us she stumbled and fell, and her feet shot
under the rail of the fence and for a moment pro-
jected over the stream. It gave us a sharp shock,
for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground
slanted steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer
impossibility; but she managed to scramble up, and
ran by us laughing.

A Tramp Abroad 97

We went forward and examined the place and saw
the long tracks which her feet had made in the dirt
when they darted over the verge. If she had
finished her trip she would have struck some big
rocks in the edge of the water, and then the tor-
rent would have snatched her down stream among
the half-covered bowlders and she would have been
pounded to pulp in two minutes. We had come
exceedingly near witnessing her death.

And now Harris's contrary nature and inborn
selfishness were strikingly manifested. He has no
spirit of self-denial. He began straight off, and
continued for an hour, to express his gratitude that
the child was not destroyed. I never saw such a
man. That was the kind of person he was ; just so
he was gratified, he never cared anything about
anybody else. I had noticed that trait in him, over
and over again. Often, of course, it was mere heed-
lessness, mere want of reflection. Doubtless this
may have been the case in most instances, but it
was not the less hard to bear on that account, —
and after all, its bottom, its groundwork, was selfish-
ness. There is no avoiding that conclusion. In
the instance under consideration, I did think the
indecency of running on in that way might occur to
him ; but no, the child was saved and he was glad,
thatt was sufficient, — he cared not a straw for my
feelings, or my Toss of such a literary plum,
snatched from my very mouth at the instant it was
ready to drop into it. His selfishness was sufficient

98 A Tramp Abroad

to place his own gratification in being spared suffer-
ing clear before all concern for me, his friend.
Apparently, he did not once reflect upon the valuable
details which would have fallen like a windfall to
me: fishing the child out, — witnessing the surprise
of the family and the stir the thing would have made
among the peasants, — then a Swiss funeral, — then
the roadside monument, to be paid for by us and
have our names mentioned in it. And we should
have gone into Baedeker and been immortal. I
was silent. I was too much hurt to complain. If
he could act so, and be so heedless and so frivolous
at such a time, and actually seem to glory in it,
after all I had done for him, I would have cut my
hand off before I would let him see that I was
wounded.

We were approaching Zermatt; consequently, we
were approaching the renowned Matterhom. A
month before, this mountain had been only a name
to us, but latterly we had been moving through a
steadily thickening double row of pictures of it,
done in oil, water, chromo, wood, steel, copper,
crayon, and photography, and so it had at length
become a shape to us, — and a very distinct, de-
cided, and familiar one, too. We were expecting
to recognize that mountain whenever or wherever
we should run across it. We were not deceived.
The monarch was far away when we first saw him,
but there was no such thing as mistaking him. He
has the rare peculiarity of standing by himself; he

A Tramp Abroad 99

is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly
shaped. He towers into the sky like a colossal
wedge, with the upper third of its blade bent a little
to the left. The broad base of this monster wedge
is planted upon a grand glacier-paved Alpine plat-
form whose elevation is ten thousand feet above sea
level ; as the wedge itself is some five thousand feet
high, it follows that its apex is about fifteen thou-
sand feet above sea level. So the whole bulk of
this stately piece of rock, this sky-cleaving monolith,
is above the line of eternal snow. Yet while all its
giant neighbors have the look of being built of solid
snow, from their waists up, the Matterhorn stands
black and naked and forbidding, the year round, or
merely powdered or streaked with white in places,
for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay
there. Its strange form, its august isolation, and its
majestic unkinship with its own kind, make it, — so
to speak, — the Napoleon of the mountain world.
** Grand, gloomy, and peculiar,*' is a phrase which
fits it as aptly as it fitted the great captain.

Think of a monument a mile high, standing on a
pedestal two miles high ! This is what the Matter-
horn is, — a monument. Its office, henceforth, for
all time, will be to keep watch and ward over the
secret resting-place of the young Lord Douglas,
who, in 1865, was precipitated from the summit
over a precipice 4,000 feet high, and never seeii
again. No man ever had such a monument as this
before; the most imposing of the world's other

: •Vii

100 A Tramp Abroad

monuments are but atoms compared to it; and they
will perish, and their places will pass from memory,
but this will remain.*

A walk from St. Nicholas to Zermatt is a wonder-
ful experience. Nature is built on a stupendous plan
in that region. One marches continually between
walls that are piled into the skies, with their upper
heights broken into a confusion of sublime shapes
that gleam white and cold against the background of
blue ; and here and there one sees a big glacier dis-
playing its grandeurs on the top of a precipice, or a
graceful cascade leaping and flashing down the green
declivities. There is nothing tame, or cheap, or
trivial, — it is all magnificent. That short valley is
a picture gallery of a notable kind, for it contains
no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator has
hung it with His masterpieces.

We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine
hours out from St. Nicholas. Distance, by guide-
book, 12 miles, by pedometer 72. We were in the
heart and home of the mountain-climbers, now, as
all visible things testified. The snow-peaks did not
hold themselves aloof, in aristocratic reserve, they
nestled close around, in a friendly, sociable way;

*The accident which cost Lord Douglas his fife (see chapter 12)
also cost the fives of three other men. These three feU four-fifths of a
mile, and their bodies were afterwards found, lying side by side, upon a
glacier, whence they were borne to Zermatt and buried in the church-
yard. The remains of Lord Douglas have never been found. The
secret of his sepulture, fike that of Moses, must remain a mystery
always.

A Tramp Abroad 101

guides, with the ropes and axes and other imple-
ments of their fearful calling slung about their per-
sons, roosted in a long line upon a stone wall in
front of the hotel, and waited for customers ; sun-
burned climbers, in mountaineering costume, and
followed by their guides and porters, arrived from
time to time, from breakneck expeditions among
the peaks and glaciers of the High Alps ; male and
female tourists, on mules, filed by, in a continuous
procession, hotelward-bound from wild adventures
which would grow in grandeur every time they
were described at the English or American fireside,
and at last outgrow the possible itself.

We were not dreaming; this was not a make-
believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our
heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr. Girdle-
stone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his
way to the most formidable Alpine summits without
a guide. I was not equal to imagining a Girdle-
stone; it was all I could do to even realize him,
while looking straight at him at short range. I
would rather face whole Hyde Parks of artillery than
the ghastly forms of death which he has faced
among the peaks and precipices of the mountains.
There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure
of climbing a dangerous Alp ; but it is a pleasure
which is confined strictly to people who can find
pleasure in it. I have not jumped to this conclu-
sion ; I have traveled to it per gravel train, so to
speak. I have thought the thing all out, and am

102 A Tramp Abroad

quite sure I am right. A bom climber's appetite
for climbing is hard to satisfy; when it comes upon
him he is like a starving man with a feast before
him; he may have other business on hand^ but it
must wait. Mr. Girdlestone had had his usual sum-
mer holiday in the Alps, and had spent it in his
usual way» hunting for unique chances to break his
neck ; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed
for England, but all of a sudden a hunger had come
upon him to climb the tremendous Weisshorn once
more, for he had heard of a new and utterly impos-
sible route up it. His baggage was unpacked at
once, and now he and a friend, laden with knap-
sacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens of milk,
were just setting out. They would spend the night
high up among the snows, somewhere, and get up
at two in the morning and finish the enterprise. I
had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it
down, — a feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his
fortitude, could not do.

Even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are
unable to throw it off. A famous climber, of that
sex, had attempted the Weisshorn a few days before
our arrival, and she and her guides had lost their
way in a snowstorm high up among the peaks and
glaciers and been forced to wander around a good
while before they could find a way down. When
this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her
feet twenty-three hours !

Our guides, hired on the Gremmi, were already at

A Tramp Abroad 103

Zermatt when we reached there. So there w)as
nothing to interfere with our getting up an adven-
ture whenever we should choose the time and the
object. I resolved to devote my first evening in
Zermatt to studying up the subject of Alpine climb-
ing, by way of preparation.

I read several books, and here are some of the
things I found out. One's shoes must be strong
and heavy, and have pointed hob-nails in them.
The alpenstock must be of the best wood, for if it
should break, loss of life might be the result. One
should carry an axe, to cut steps in the ice with, on
the great heights. There must be a ladder, for
there are steep bits of rock which can be surmounted
with this instrument, — or this utensil, — but could
not be . surmounted without it ; such an obstruction
has compelled the tourist to waste hours hunting
another route, when a ladder would have saved him
all trouble. One must have from 150 to 500 feet
of strong rope, to be used in lowering the party
down steep declivities which are too steep and
smooth to be traversed in any other way. One
must have a steel hook, on another rope, —a very
useful thing ; for when one is ascending and comes
to a low bluff which is yet too high for the ladder,
he swings this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook
catches at the top of the bluff, and then the tourist
climbs the rope, hand over hand, — being always
particular to try and forget that if the hook gives
way he will never stop falling till he arrives in some

104 A Tramp Abroad

part of Switzerland where they are not expecting
him. Another important thing — there must be a
rope to tie the whole party together with, so that if
one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless
chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the
rope and save him. One must have a silk veil, to
protect his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and
colored goggles to protect his eyes from that danger-
ous enemy, snow-blindness. Finally, there must be
some porters, to carry provisions, wine and scientific
instruments, and also blanket bags for the party to
sleep in.

I closed my readings with a fearful adventure
which Mr. Whymper once had on the Matterhorn
when he was prowling around alone, 5,000 feet above
the town of Breil. He was edging his way gingerly
around the corner of a precipice where the upper
edge of a sharp declivity of ice-glazed snow joined
it. This declivity swept down a couple of hundred
feet, into a gully which curved around and ended at
a precipice 800 feet high, overlooking a glacier.
His foot slipped, and he fell. He says:

•• My knapsack brought my head down first, and
I pitched into some rock about a dozen feet below ;
they caught something, and tumbled me off the
edge, head over heels, into the gully; the baton
was dashed from my hands, and I whirled down-
wards in a series of bounds, each longer than the
last; now over ice, now into rocks, striking my
head four or five times, each time with increased

A Tramp Abroad 105

force. The last bound sent me spinning through
the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet, from one side
of the gully to the other, and I struck the rocks,
luckily, with the whole of my left side. They
caught my clothes for a moment, and I fell back on
to the snow with motion arrested. My head fortu-
nately came the right side up, and a few frantic
catches brought me to a halt, in the neck of the
gully and on the verge of the precipice. Baton,
hat, and veil skimmed by and disappeared, and the
crash of the rocks — which I had started — as they
fell on to the glacier, told how narrow had been the
escape from utter destruction. As it was, I fell
nearly 200 feet in seven or eight bounds. Ten feet
more would have taken me in one gigantic leap of
800 feet on to the glacier below.

"The situation was sufficiently serious. The
rocks could not be let go for a moment, and the
blood was spurting out of more than twenty cuts.
The most serious ones were in the head, and I
vainly tried to close them with one hand, while
holding on with the other. It was useless; the
blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation.
At last, in a moment of inspiration, I kicked out a
big lump of show and stuck it as plaster on my
head. The idea was a happy one, and the flow of
blood diminished. Then, scrambling up, I got, not
a moment too soon, to a place of safety, and
fainted away. The sun was setting when conscious-
ness returned, and it was pitch dark before the Great

106 A Tramp Abroad

Staircase was descended; but by a combination
of luck and care, the whole 4,700 feet of descent to
Breil was accomplished without a slip, or once miss-
ing the way."

His wounds kept him abed some days. Then he
got up and climbed that mountain again. That is
the way with a true Alp-climber; the more fun he
has, the more he wants.

CHAPTER VIII.

SFTER I had finished my readings, I was no
longer myself; I was tranced, uplifted, intoxi-
cated, by the almost incredible perils and adventures
I had been following my authors through, and the
triumphs I had been sharing with them. I sat silent
some time, then turned to Harris and said :

*• My mind is made up."

Something in my tone struck him ; and when he
glanced at my eye and read what was written there,
his face paled perceptibly. He hesitated a moment,
then said :

••Speak."

I answered, with perfect calmness:

*• I WILL ASCEND THE RiFFELBERG."

If I had shot my poor friend he could not have
fallen from his chair more suddenly. If I had been
his father he could not have pleaded harder to get
me to give up my purpose. But I turned a deaf ear
to all he said. When he perceived at last that
nothing could alter my determination, he ceased to
urge, and for a while the deep silence was broken
only by his sobs. I sat in marble resolution, with

(107)

108 A Tramp Abroad

my eyes fixed upon vacancy, for in spirit I was
already wrestling with the perils of the mountains,
and my friend sat gazing at me in adoring admira-
tion through his tears. At last he threw himself
upon me in a loving embrace and exclaimed in
broken tones :

•* Your Harris will never desert you. We will die
together!"

I cheered the noble fellow with praises, and soon
his fears were forgotten and he was eager for the
adventure. He wanted to summon the guides at
once and leave at two in the morning, as he sup-
posed the custom was ; but I explained that nobody
was looking at that hour ; and that the start in the
dark was not usually made from the village but from
the first night's resting place on the mountain side.
I said we would leave the village at 3 or 4 P.M. on
the morrow; meantime he could notify the guides,
and also let the public know of the attempt which
we proposed to make.

I went to bed, but not to sleep. No man can
sleep when he is about to undertake one of these
Alpine exploits. I tossed feverishly all night long,
and was glad enough when I heard the clock strike
half past eleven and knew it was time to get up for
dinner. I rose, jaded and rusty, and went to the
noon meal, where I found myself the center of in-
terest and curiosity; for the news was already
abroad. It is not easy to eat calmly when you are
a lion, but it is very pleasant, nevertheless.

A Tramp Abroad

109

As usual, at Zermatt, when a great ascent is about
to be undertaken, everybody, native and foreign,
laid aside his own projects and took up a good
position to observe the start. The expedition con-
sisted of 198 persons, including the mules; or 205,
including the cows. As follows:

Chiefs of Servicb.

Subordinates.

Myself.

I

Veterinaiy Surgeon.

Mr.HaiTis.

I

Butler.

17

Guides.

12

Waiters.

4

Surgeons.

I

Footman.

I

Geolc^st.

I

Barber.

I

Botanist.

I

Head Cook.

3

9

2

Draftsmen.

4

Pastrycooks.

15

Barkeepeis.

I

Confectionery Artist.

I

Ladnist.

Transport;

moN,

ETC.

27

Porters.

3

Coarse Washers and Ironers.

44

Mules.

I

Fine ditto.

44

Muleteers.

7

Cows.

2

Milkers.

Total, 154 men, 51 anin

lals.

Grand Total, 205.

Rations, etc.

Apparatus.

16

Cases Hams.

25

Spring ^iattresses.

2

Barrek Flour.

2

Hair ditto.

22

Barrels Whislqr.

Bedding for same.

I

Barrel Sugar.

2

Mosquito Nets.

I

Keg Lemons.

29

Tents.

000

Cigars.

Scientific Instruments.

I

Barrel Pies.

97

Ice-axes.

I

Ton of PemmicaB.

5

Cases Dynamite.

143

Pair Crutches.

7

Cans Nitro-glycerine.

2

Barrels Arnica.

22

40-foot Ladders.

I

Bale of Lint.

2

Miles of Rope.

27

Keg& Paregoric.

154

Umbrellas.

110 A Tramp Abroad

It was full four o'clock in the afternoon before
my cavalcade was entirely ready. At that hour it
began to move. In point of numbers and spectac-
ular effecti it was the most imposing expedition
that had ever marched from Zermatt.

I commanded the chief guide to arrange the men
and animals in single file, twelve feet apart, and lash
them all together on a strong rope. He objected
that the first two miles was a dead level, with plenty
of room, and that the rope was never used except
in very dangerous places. But I would not listen to
that. My reading had taught me that many serious
accidents had happened in the Alps simply from not
having the people tied up soon enough ; I was not
going to add one to the list. The guide then
obeyed my order.

When the procession stood at ease, roped to-
gether, and ready to move, I never saw a finer sight.
It was 3,122 feet long — over half a mile; every
man but Harris and me was on foot, and had on his
green veil and his blue goggles, and his white rag
around his hat, and his coil of rope over one
shoulder and under the other, and his ice-axe in his
belt, and carried his alpenstock in his left hand, his
umbrella (closed) in his right, and his crutches
slung at his back. The burdens of the pack mules
and the horns of the cows were decked with the
Edelweiss and the Alpine rose.

I and my agent were the only persons mounted.
We were in the post of danger in the extreme rear,

A Tramp Abroad 111

and tied securely to five guides apiece. Our armor-
bearers carried our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other
implements for us. We were mounted upon very
small donkeys, as a measure of safety; in time of
peril we could straighten our legs and stand up, and
let the donkey walk from under. Still, I cannot
recommend this sort of animal, — at least for excur-
sions of mere pleasure, — because his ears interrupt
the view. I and my agent possessed the regulation
mountaineering costumes, but concluded to leave
them behind. Out of respect for the great numbers
of tourists of both sexes who would be assembled in
front of the hotels to see us pass, and also out of
respect for the many tourists whom we expected to
encounter on our expedition, we decided to make
the ascent in evening dress.

At fifteen minutes past four I gave the command
to move, and my subordinates passed it along the line.
The great crowd in front of the Monte Rosa hotel
parted in twain, with a cheer, as the procession ap-
proached ; and as the head of it was filing by I gave
the order, — * * Unlimber — make ready — HOIST I ' '
— and with one impulse up went my half mile of
umbrellas. It was a beautiful sight, and a total
surprise to the spectators. Nothing like that had
ever been seen in the Alps before. The applause it
brought forth was deeply gratifying to me, and I
rode by with my plug hat in my hand to testify my
appreciation of it. It was the only testimony I
could offer, for I was too full, to speak.

112 A Tramp Abroad

We watered the caravan at the cold stream whicli
rushes down a trough near the end of the village,
and soon afterward left the haunts of civilization
behind us. About half past five o'clock we arrived
at a bridge which spans the Visp, and after throwing
over a detachment to see if it was safe, the caravan
crossed without accident. The way now led, by a
gentle ascent, carpeted with fresh green grass, to
the church at Winkelmatten. Without stopping to
examine this edifice, I executed a flank movement
to the right and crossed the bridge over the Findelen-
bach, after first testing its strength. Here I deployed
to the right again, and presently entered an inviting
stretch of meadow land which was unoccupied save
by a couple of deserted huts toward its furthest
extremity. These meadows offered an excellent
camping place. We pitched our tents, supped,
established a proper guard, recorded the events of
the day, and then went to bed.

We rose at two in the morning and dressed by
candle-light. It was a dismal and chilly business.
A few stars were shining, but the general heavens
were overcast, and the great shaft of the Matterhorn
was draped in a sable pall of clouds. The chief
guide advised a delay; he said he feared it was
going to rain. We waited until nine o'clock, and
then got away in tolerably clear weather.

Our course led up some terrific steeps, densely
wooded with larches and cedars, and traversed by
paths which the rains had guttered and which were

CLIMBING THE RIFFELBERG

10 HEW YO^K
rOBUC LIBRARY

A Tramp Abroad II3

obstructed by loose stones. To add to the danger
and inconvenience, we were constantly meeting re-
turning tourists on foot or horseback, and as con-
stantly being crowded and battered by ascending
tourists who were in a hurry and wanted to get by.

Our troubles thickened. About the middle of
the afternoon the seventeen guides called a halt and
held a consultation. After consulting an hour they
said their first suspicion remained intact, — that is to
say, they believed they were lost. I asked if they
did not know it? No, they said, they couldn*t
absolutely know whether they were lost or not, be-
cause none of them had ever been in that part of
the country before. They had a strojlg instinct that
they were lost, but they had no prO^^, — except
that they did not know where they were. They had
met no tourists for some time, and they cpnsidered
that a suspicious sign. ,1.) ?;.« '

Plainly we were in an ugly fix. The guides were
naturally unwilling to go alone and seek a way out
of the difficulty; so we all went together. For
better security we moved slow and cautiously, for
the forest was very dense. We did not move up
the mountain, but around it, hoping to strike across
the old trail. Toward nightfall, when we were about
tired out, we came up against a rock as big as a
cottage. This barrier took all the remaining spirit
out of the men, and a panic of fear and despair
ensued. They moaned and wept, and said they
should never see their homes and their dear ones
8««

114 A Tramp Abroad

again. Then they began to upraid me for bringing
them upon this fatal expedition. Some even mut-
tered threats against me.

Clearly it was no time to show weakness. So I
made a speech in which I said that other Alp-
climbers had been in as perilous a position as this,
and yet by courage and perseverance had escaped.
I promised to stand by them, I promised to rescue
them. I closed by saying we had plenty of provi-
sions to maintain us for quite a siege, — and did
they suppose Zermatt would allow half a mile of
men and mules to mysteriously disappear during
any considerable time, right above their noses, and
make no inquiries? No, Zermatt would send out
searching-expeditions and we should be saved.

This speech had a great effect. The men pitched
the tents with some little show of cheerfulness, and
we were snugly under cover when the night shut
down. I now reaped the reward of my wisdom in
providing one article which is not mentioned in any
book of Alpine adventure but this. I refer to the
paregoric. But for that beneficent drug, not one of
those men would have slept a moment during that
fearful night. But for that gentle persuader they
must have tossed, unsoothed, the night through;
for the whisky was for me. Yes, they would have
risen in the morning unfitted for their heavy task.
As it was, everybody slept but my agent and me, —
only we two and the barkeepers. I would not per-
mit myself to sleep at such a time. I considered

A Tramp Abroad 115

myself responsible for all those lives. I meant to
be on hand and ready, in case of avalanches. I am
aware now, that there were no avalanches up there,
but I did not know it then.

We watched the weather all through that awful
night, and kept an eye on the barometer, to be pre-
pared for the least change. There was not the
slightest change recorded by the instrument, during
the whole time. Words cannot describe the comfort
that that friendly, hopeful, steadfast thing was to
me in that season of trouble. It was a defective
barometer, and had no hand but the stationary brass
pointer, but I did not know that until afterward.
If I should be in such a situation again, I should not
wish for any barometer but that one.

All hands rose at two in the morning and took
breakfast, and as soon as it was light we roped
ourselves together and went at that rock. For some
time we tried the hook-rope and other means of
scaling it, but without success — that is, without
perfect success. The hook caught once, and Harris
started up it hand over hand, but the hold broke
and if there had not happened to be a chaplain sit-
ting underneath at the time, Harris would certainly
have been crippled. As it was, it was the chaplain.
He took to his crutches, and I ordered the hook-
rope to be laid aside. It was too dangerous an
implement where so many people were standing
around.

We were puzzled for a while; then somebody

116 A Tramp Abroad

thought of the ladders. One of these was leaned
against the rock, and the men went up it tied to-
gether in couples. Another ladder was sent up for
use in descending. At the end of half an hour
everybody was over, and that rock was conquered.
We gave our first grand shout of triumph. But the
joy was short-lived, for somebody asked how we
were going to get the animals over.

This was a serious difficulty; in fact, it was an
impossibility. The courage of the men began to
waver immediately; once more we were threatened
with a panic. But when the danger was most im-
minent, we were saved in a mysterious way. A
mule which had attracted attention from the begin-
ning by its disposition to experiment, tried to eat a
five-pound can of nitroglycerine. This happened
right alongside the rock. The explosion threw us
all to the ground, and covered us with dirt and
debris; it frightened us extremely, too, for the
crash it made was deafening, and the violence of
the shock made the ground tremble. However, we
were grateful, for the rock was gone. Its place was
occupied by a new cellar, about thirty feet across,
by fifteen feet deep. The explosion was heard as
far as Zermatt; and an hour and a half afterward,
many citizens of that town were knocked down and
quite seriously injured by descending portions of
mule meat, frozen solid. This shows, better than
any estimate in figures, how high the experimenter
went.

A Tramp Abroad 117

We had nothing to do, now, but bridge the cellar
and proceed on our way. With a cheer the men
went at their work. I attended to the engineering,
myself. I appointed a strong detail to cut down
trees with ice-axes and trim them for piers to sup-
port the bridge. This was a slow business, for ice-
axes are not good to cut wood with. I caused my
piers to be firmly set up in ranks in the cellar, and
upon them I laid six of my forty-foot ladders, side
by side, and laid six more on top of them. Upon
this bridge I caused a bed of boughs to be spread,
and on top of the boughs a bed of earth six inches
deep. I stretched ropes upon either side to serve
as railings, and then my bridge was complete. A
train of elephants could have crossed it in safety and
comfort. By nightfall the caravan was on the other
side and the ladders taken up.

Next morning we went on in good spirits for a
while, though our way was slow and difficult, by
reason of the steep and rocky nature of the ground
and the thickness of the forest ; but at last a dull
despondency crept into the men's faces and it was
apparent that not only they, but even the guides,
were now convinced that we were lost. The fact
that we still met no tourists was a circumstance that
was but too significant. Another thing seemed to
suggest that we were not only lost, but very badly
lost; for there must surely be searching-parties on
the road before this time, yet we had seen no sign
of them.

118 A Tramp Abroad

Demoralization was spreading; something must
be done, and done quickly , too. Fortunately, I
am not unfertile in expedients. I contrived one
now which commended itself to all, for it promised
well. I took three-quarters of a mile of rope and
fastened one end of it around the waist of a guide,
and told him to go and find the road, while the
caravan waited. I instructed him to guide himself
back by the rope, in case of failure ; in case of suc-
cess, he was to give the rope a series of violent
jerks, whereupon the Expedition would go to him at
once. He departed, and in two minutes had disap-
peared among the trees. I payed out the rope
myself, while everybody watched the crawling thing
with eager eyes. The rope crept away quite slowly,
at times, at other times with some briskness. Twice
or thrice we seemed to get the signal, and a shout
was just ready to break from the men's lips when
ihey perceived it was a false alarm. But at last,
when over half a mile of rope had slidden away it
stopped gliding and stood absolutely still, — one
minute, — two minutes, — three, — while we held our
breath and watched.

Was the guide resting? Was he scanning the
country from some high point? Was he inquiring
of a chance mountaineer? Stop, — had he fainted
from excess of fatigue and anxiety?

This thought gave us a shock. I was in the very
act of detailing an Expedition to succor him, when
the cord was assailed with a series of such frantic

A Tramp Abroad 119

jerks that I could hardly keep hold of it. The huzza
that went up, then, was good to hear. ** Saved!
saved!" was the word that rang out, all down the
long rank of the caravan.

We rose up and started at once. We found the
route to be good enough for a while, but it began
to grow difficult, by and by, and this feature
steadily increased. When we judged we had gone
half a mile, we momently expected to see the guide;
but ho, he was not visible anywhere ; neither was he
wsuting, for the rope was still moving, consequently
he was doing the same. This argued that he had
not found the road, yet, but was marching to it with
some peasant. There was nothing for us to do but
plod along, — and this we did. At the end of three
hours we were still plodding. This was not only
mysterious, but exasperating. And very fatiguing,
too; for we had tried hard, along at first, to catch
up with the guide, but had only fagged ourselves, in
vain; for although he was traveling slowly he was
yet able to go faster than the hampered caravan
over such ground.

At three in the afternoon we were nearly dead
with exhaustion, — and still the rope was slowly
gliding out. The murmurs against the guide had
been growing steadily, and at last they were become
loud and savage. A mutiny ensued. The men re-
fused to proceed. They declared that we had been
traveling over and over the same ground all day, in
a kind of circle. They demanded that our end of

120 A Tramp Abroad

the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt' the
guide until we could overtake him and kill him.
This was not an unreasonable requirement, so I gave
the order.

As soon as the rope was tied, the Expedition
moved forward with that alacrity which the thirst
for vengeance usually inspires. But after a tiresome
march of almost half a mile, we came to a hill
covered thick with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and
so steep that no man of us all was now in a condi-
tion to climb it. Every attempt failed, and ended
in crippling somebody. Within twenty minutes I
had five men on crutches. Whenever a climber
tried to assist himself by the rope, it yielded and
let him tumble backwards. The frequency of this
result suggested an idea to me. I ordered the
caravan to 'bout face and form in marching order ;
I then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and
gave the command :

"Mark time — by the right flank — forward —
march!"

The procession began to move, to the impressive
strains of a battle-chant, and I said to myself,
•• Now, if the rope don't break I judge this will
fetch that guide into the camp." I watched the
rope gliding down the hill, and presently when I
was all fixed for triumph I was confronted by a
bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied to
the rope, it was only a very indignant old black
ram. The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded

A Tramp Abroad 121

all bounds. They even wanted to wreak their un-
reasoning vengeance on this innocent dumb brute.
But I stood between them and their prey, menaced
by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks, and
proclaimed that there was but one road to this
murder, and it was directly over my corse. Even
as I spoke I saw that my doom was sealed, except a
miracle supervened to divert these madmen from
their fell purpose. I see that sickening wall of
weapons now ; I see that advancing host as I saw it
then , I see the hate in those cruel eyes ; I remember
how I drooped my head upon my breast, I feel
again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear, ad-
ministered by the very ram I was sacrificing myself
to save ; I hear once more the typhoon of laughter
that burst from the assaulting column as I clove it
from van to rear like a Sepoy shot from a Rodman
gun.

I was saved. Yes, I was saved, and by the
merciful instinct of ingratitude which nature had
planted in the breast of that treacherous beast. The
grace which eloquence had failed to work in those
men's hearts, had been wrought by a laugh. The
ram was set free and my life was spared.

We lived to find out that that guide had deserted
us as soon as he had placed a half mile between
himself and us. To avert suspicion, he had judged
it best that the line should continue to move ; so he
caught that ram, and at the time that he was sitting
on it making the rope fast to it, we were imagining

122 A Tramp Abroad

that he was lying in a swoon, overcome by fatigue
and distress. When he allowed the ram to get up
it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself of the
rope, and this was the signal which we had risen up
with glad shouts to obey. We had followed this
ram round and round in a circle all day — a thing
which was proven by the discovery that we had
watered the Expedition seven times at one and the
same spring in seven hours. As expert a woodman
as I am, I had somehow failed to notice this until
my attention was called to it by a hog. This hog
was always wallowing there, and as he was the only
hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with
his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me
to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led
me to the deduction that this must be the same
spring, also, — which indeed it was.

I made a note of this curious thing, as showing in
a striking manner the relative dijGference between
glacial action and the action of the hog. It is now
a well-established fact, that glaciers move; I con-
sider that my observations go to show, with equal
conclusiveness, that a hog in a spring does not
move. I shall be glad to receive the opinions of
other observers upon this point.

To return, for an explanatory moment, to that
guide, and then I shall be done with him. After leav-
ing the ram tied to the rope, he had wandered at large
a while, and then happened to run across a cow.
Judging that a cow would naturally know more than

A Tramp Abroad 123

a guide, he took her by the tail, and the result
justified his judgment. She nibbled her leisurely
way down hill till it was near milking time, then she
struck for home and towed him into Zermatt.

CHAPTER IX.

WE went into camp on that wild spot to which
that ram had brought us. The men were
greatly fatigued. Their conviction that we were
lost was forgotten in the cheer of a good supper,
and before the reaction had a chance to set in, I
loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.
Next morning I was considering in my mind our
desperate situation and trying to think of a remedy,
when Harris came to me with a Baedeker map
which showed conclusively that the mountain we
were on was still in Switzerland, — yes, every part
of it was in Switzerland. So we were not lost,
after all. This was an immense relief; it lifted the
weight of two such mountains from my breast. I
immediately had the news disseminated and the map
exhibited. The effect was wonderful. As soon as
the men saw with their own eyes that they knew
where they were, and that it was only the summit
that was lost and not themselves, they cheered up
instantly and said with one accord, let the summit
take care of itself, they were not interested in its
troubles.

(124)

A Tramp Abroad 125

Our distresses being at an end, I now determined to
rest the men in camp and give the scientific depart-
ment of the Expedition a chance. First, I made a
barometric observation, to get our altitude, but I
could not perceive that there was any result. I
knew, by my scientific reading, that either ther-
mometers or barometers ought to be boiled, to make
them accurate; I did not know which it was, so I
boiled both. There was still no result; so I ex-
amined these instruments and discovered that they
possessed radical blemishes : the barometer had no
hand but the brass pointer and the ball of the
thermometer was stuffed with tin foil. I might
have boiled those things to rags, and never found
out anything.

I hunted up another barometer ; it was new and
perfect. I boiled it half an hour in a pot of bean
soup which the cooks were making. The result was
unexpected : the instrument was not affected at all,
but there was such a strong barometer taste to the
soup that the head cook, who was a most conscien-
tious person, changed its name in the bill of fare.
The dish was so greatly liked by all, that I ordered
the cook to have barometer soup every day. It was
believed that the barometer might eventually be
injured, but I did not care for that. I had demon-
strated to my satisfaction that it could not tell how
high a mountain was, therefore I had no real use for
it. Changes of the weather I could take care of
without it; I did not wish to know when the weather

126 A Tramp Abroad

was going to be good, what I wanted to know was
when it was going to be bad, and this I could find
out from Harris's corns. Harris had had his corns
tested and regulated at the government observatory
in Heidelberg, and one could depend upon them
with confidence. So I transferred the new barometer
to the cooking department, to be used for the official
mess. It was found that even a pretty fair article of
soup could be made with the defective barometer ;
so I allowed that one to be transferred to the subor-
dinate messes.

I next boiled the thermometer, and got a most ex-
cellent result; the mercury went up to about 200**
Fahrenheit. In the opinion of the other scientists of
the Expedition, this seemed to indicate that we
had attained the extraordinary altitude of 200,000
feet above sea level. Science places the line of
eternal snow at about 10,000 feet above sea level.
There was no snow where we were, consequently it
was proven that the eternal snow line ceases some-
where above the 10,000-foot level and does not begin
any more. This was an interesting fact, and one
which had not been observed by any observer be-
fore. It was as valuable as interesting, too, since
it would open up the deserted summits of the highest
Alps to population and agriculture. It was a proud
thing to be where we were, yet it caused us a pang
to reflect that but for that ram we might just as
well have been 200,000 feet higher.

The success of my last experiment induced me to

A Tramp Abroad 127

try an experiment with my photographic apparatus.
I got it out^ and boiled one of my cameras, but the
thing was a failure : it made the wood swell up and
burst, and I could not see that the lenses were any
better than they were before.

I now concluded to boil a guide. It might im-
prove him, it could not impair his usefulness. But
I was not allowed to proceed. Guides have no
feeling for science, and this one. would not consent
to be made uncomfortable in its interest.

In the midst of my scientific work, one of those
needless accidents happened which are always occur-
ring among the ignorant and thoughtiess. A porter
shot at a chamois and missed it and crippled the
Latinist. This was not a serious matter to me, for
a Latinist's duties are as well performed on crutches
as otherwise, — but the fact remained that if the
Latinist had not happened to be in the way a mule
would have got that load. That would have been
quite another matter, for when it comes down to a
question of value there is a palpable difference be-
tween a Latinist and a mule. I could not depend on
having a Latinist in the right place every time ; so,
to make things safe, I ordered that in the future
the chamois must not be hunted within limits of
the camp with any other weapon than the fore-
finger.

My nerves had hardly grown quiet after this affair
when they got another shake-up, — one which utterly
unmanned me for a moment: a rumor swept sud-

128 A Tramp Abroad

denly through the camp that one of the barkeepers
had fallen over a precipice I

However, it turned out that it was only a chaplain.
I had laid in an extra force of chaplains, purposely
to be prepared for emergencies like this, but by-
some unaccountable oversight had come away rather
short-handed in the matter of barkeepers.

On the following morning we moved on, well re-
freshed and in good spirits. I remember this day
with peculiar pleasure, because it saw our road
restored to us. Yes, we found our road again, and
in quite an extraordinary way. We had plodded
along some two hours and a half, when we came up
against a solid mass of rock about twenty feet high.
I did not need to be instructed by a mule this time.
I was already beginning to know more than any mule
in the Expedition. I dt once put in a blast of
dynamite, and lifted that rock out of the way. But
to my surprise and mortification, I found that there
had been a chalet on top of it.

I picked up such members of the family as fell in
my vicinity, and subordinates of my corps collected
the rest. None of these poor people were injured,
happily, but they were much annoyed. I explained
to the head chaleteer just how the thing happened,
and that I was only searching for the road, and
would certainly have given him timely notice if I had
known he was up there. I said I had meant no
harm, and hoped I had not lowered myself in his
estimation by raising him a few rods in the air. I

A Tramp Abroad 12g

said many other judicious things, and finally when
I offered to rebuild his chalet, and pay for the break-
ages, and throw in the cellar, he was mollified and
satisfied. He hadn't any cellar at all, before; he
would not have as good a view, now, as formerly, but
what he had lost in view he had gained in cellar, by
exact measurement. He said there wasn't another
hole like that in the mountains, — and he would have
been right if the late mule had not tried to eat up
the nitroglycerine.

I put a hundred and sixteen men at work, and
they rebuilt the chalet from its own debris in fifteen
minutes. It was a good deal more picturesque than
it was before, too. The man said we were now on
the Feli-Stutz, above the Schwegmatt, — information
which I was glad to get, since it gave us our position
to a degree of particularity which we had not been
accustomed to for a day or so. We also learned
that we were standing at the foot of the Riffelberg
proper, and that the initial chapter of our work was
completed.

We had a fine view, from here, of the energetic
Visp, as it makes its first plunge into the world from
under a huge arch of solid ice, worn through the
foot- wall of the great Corner Glacier; and we could
also see the Furggenbach, which is the outlet of the
Furggen Glacier.

The mule road to the summit of the Riffelberg
passed right in front of the chalet, a circumstance
which we almost immediately noticed, because a pro-
9».

130 A Tramp Abroad

cession of tourists was filing along it pretty much all
the time.* The chaleteer's business consisted in
furnishing refreshments to tourists. My blast had
interrupted this trade for a few minutes, by breaking
all the bottles on the place ; but I gave the man a
lot of whisky to sell for Alpine champagne, and a
lot of vinegar which would answer for Rhine wine,
consequently trade was soon as brisk as ever.

Leaving the Expedition outside to rest, I quartered
myself in the chalet, with Harris, purposing to cor-
rect my journals and scientific observations before
continuing the ascent. I had hardly begun my work
when a tall, slender, vigorous American youth of
about twenty-three, who was on his way down the
mountain, entered and came toward me with that
breezy self-complacency which is the adolescent's
idea of the well-bred ease of the man of the world.
His hair was short and parted accurately in the mid-
dle, and he had all the look of an American person
who would be likely to begin his signature with an
initial, and spell his middle name out. He introduced
himself, smiling a smirky smile borrowed from the
courtiers of the stage, extended a fair-skinned talon,
and while he gripped my hand in it he bent his body
forward three times at the hips, as the stage-courtier
doesi and said in the airiest and most condescending
and patronizing way, — I quote his exact language:

* << Ptetty much " may not be elegant English, but it is h^b time it
was. Tbere is no elegant word or phrase which means just what it
means.— -M. T.

A Tramp Abroad 13 1

** Very glad to make your acquaintance, 'm sure;
very glad indeed, assure you. I've read all your
little efforts and greatly admired them, and when I
heard you were here, I . . . ."

I indicated a chair, and he sat down. This
gfrandee was the grandson of an American of con-
siderable note in his day, and not wholly forgotten
yet, — a man who came so near being a great man
that he was quite generally accounted one while he
lived.

I slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific
problems, and heard this conversation:

Grandson. First visit to Europe?

Harris. Mine? Yes.

G. S. (With a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive
of bygone joys that may be tasted in their freshness
but once.) Ah, I know what it is to you. A first
visit ! — ah, the romance of it ! I wish I could feel
it again.

H. Yes, I find it exceeds all my dreams. It is
enchantment. I go . . .

G. S, (With a dainty gesture of the hand signi-
fying •• Spare me your callow enthusiasms, good
friend.") Yes, / know, I know; you go to cathe-
drals, and exclaim; and you drag through league-
long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you stand
here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground,
and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated
with your first crude conceptions of Art, and are
proud and happy. Ah, yes, proud and happy —

152 A Tramp Abroad

that expresses it. Yes-yes, enjoy it — it is right, —
it is an innocent revel.

H. And you? Don't you do these things now?

G. S. I ! Oh, that is very good ! My dear sir,
when you are as old a traveler as I am, you will not
ask such a question as that. / visit the regulation
gallery, moon around the regulation cathedral, do
the worn round of the regulation sights, yetf — Ex-
cuse me I

H. Well, what do you do, then?

G. S. Do? I flit, — and flit, — for I am ever on
the wing, — but I avoid the herd. To-day I am in
Paris, to-morrow in Berlin, anon in Rome ; but you
would look for me in vain in the galleries of the
Louvre or the common resorts of the gazers in those
other capitals. If you would find me, you must
look in the unvisited nooks and corners where others
never think of going. One day you will find me
making myself at home in some obscure peasant's
cabin, another day you will find me in some for-
gotten castle worshiping some little gem of art
which the careless eye has overlooked and which the
unexperienced would despise; again you will find
me a guest in the inner sanctuaries of palaces while
the herd is content to get a hurried glimpse of the
unused chambers by feeing a servant.

If. You are a £^est in such places?

G. S. And a welcome one.

If. It is surprising. How does it come?

G. S. My grandfather's name is a passport to all

A Tramp Abroad 133

the courts in Europe. I have only to utter that
name and every door is open to me. I flit from
court to court at my own free will and pleasure, and
am always welcome. I am as much at home in the
palaces of Europe as you are among your relatives.
I know every titled person in Europe, I think. I
have my pockets full of invitations all the time. I
am under promise now to go to Italy, where I am
to be the g^est of a succession of the noblest houses
in the land. In Berlin my life is a continued round
of gayety in the imperial palace. It is the same,
wherever I go.

H. It must be very pleasant. But it must make
Boston seem a little slow when you are at home.

G. S. Yes, of course it does. But I don't go
home much. There's no life there — little to feed a
man's higher nature. Boston's very narrow, you
know. She doesn't know it, and you couldn't con-
vince her of it — so I say nothing when I'm there:
where's the use? Yes, Boston is very narrow, but
she has such a good opinion of herself that she can't
see it. A man who has traveled as much as I have,
and seen as much of the world, sees it plain enough,
but he can't cure it, you know, so the best way is
to leave it and seek a sphere which is more in har-
mony with his tastes and culture. I run across there,
once a year, perhaps, when I have nothing important
on hand, but I'm very soon back again. I spend
my time in Europe.

H. I see. You map out your plans and . . .

134 A Tramp Abroad

G, S. No, excuse me. I don't map out any
plans. I simply follow the inclination of the dfiy.
I am limited by no ties, no requirements, I am not
bound in any way. I am too old a traveler to
hamper myself with deliberate purposes. I am
simply a traveler — an inveterate traveler — a man
of the world, in a word, — I can call myself by no
other name. I do not say, ** I am going here, or I
am going there *' — I say nothing at all, I only act.
For instance, next week you may find me the guest
of a grandee of Spain, or you may iind me off for
Venice, or flitting toward Dresden. I shall probably
go to Egypt presently; friends will say to friends,
••He is at the Nile cataracts" — and at that very
moment they will be surprised to learn that I'm away
off yonder in India somewhere. I am a constant
surprise to people. They are always saying, ** Yes,
he was in Jerusalem when we heard of him last, but
goodness knows where he is now."

Presently the Grandson rose to leave — discovered
he had an appointment with some Emperor, per-
haps. He did his graces over again: gripped me
with one talon, at arm's length, pressed his hat
against his stomach with the other, bent his body in
the middle three times, murmuring :

•'Pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, *m sure.
Wish you much success."

Then he removed his gracious presence. It is a
great and solemn thing to have a grandfather.

I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in

A Tramp Abroad 135

any way, for what little indignation he excited in me
soon passed and left nothing behind it but compas-
sion. One cannot keep up a grudge against a
vacuum. I have tried to repeat the lad's very
words ; if I have failed anywhere I have at least not
failed to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what
he said. He and the innocent chatterbox whom I
met on the Swiss lake are the most unique and inter-
esting specimens of Young America I came across
during my foreign tramping. I have made honest
portraits of them, not caricatures. The Grandson of
twenty-three referred to himself five or six times as
an ** old traveler," and as many as three times (with
a serene complacency which was maddening) as a
** man of the world." There was something very
delicious about his leaving Boston to her ••narrow-
ness," unreproved and uninstructed.

I formed the caravan in marching order, presently,
and after riding down the line to see that it was
properly roped together, gave the command to pro-
ceed. In a little while the road carried us to open,
grassy land. We were above the troublesome
forest, now, and had an uninterrupted view, straight
before us, of our summit, — the summit of the
Riffelberg.

We followed the mule road, a zigzag course, now
to the right, now to the left, but always up, and
always crowded and incommoded by going and com-
ing files of reckless tourists who were never, in a
single instance, tied together. I was obliged to

136 A Tramp Abroad

exert the utmost care and caution, for in many
places the road was not two yards wide, and often
the lower side of it sloped away in slanting precipices
eight and even nine feet deep. I had to encourage
the men constantly, to keep them from giving way
to their unmanly fears.

We might have made the summit before night, but
for a delay caused by the loss of an umbrella. I
was for allowing the umbrella to remain lost, but
the men murmured, and with reason, for in this ex-
posed region we stood in peculiar need of protection
against avalanches; so I went into camp and de-
tached a strong party to go after the missing article.

The difficulties of the next morning were severe,
but our courage was high, for our goal was near.
At noon we conquered the last impediment — we
stood at last upon the summit, and without the loss
of a single man except the mule that ate the
glycerine. Our great achievement was achieved —
the possibility of the impossible was demonstrated,
and Harris and I walked proudly into the great
dining-room of the Riffelberg Hotel and stood our
alpenstocks up in the comer.

Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a
mistake to do it in evening dress. The plug hats
were battered, the swallow-tails were fluttering rags,
mud added no grace, the general effect was unpleas-
ant and even disreputable.

There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel,
— mainly ladies and little children, — and they gave

A Tramp Abroad 137

us an admiring welcome which paid us for all our
privations and sufferings. The ascent had been
made, and the names and dates now stand recorded
on a stone monument there to prove it to all future
tourists.

I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with
a most curious result : the summit was not as high
as the point on the mountainside where I had taken
the first altitude. Suspecting that I had made an
important discovery, I prepared to verify it. There
happened to be a still higher summit (called the
Corner Grat), above the hotel, and notwithstanding
the fact that it overlooks a glacier from a dizzy
height, and that the ascent is difficult and dangerous, I
resolved to venture up there and boil a thermometer.
So I sent a strong party, with some borrowed hoes,
in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig a stairway
in the soil all the way, and this I aspended, roped to
the guides. This breezy height was the summit
proper — so I accomplished even more than I had
originally purposed to do. This foolhardy exploit
is recorded on another stone monument.

I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this
spot, which purported to be 2,000 feet higher than
the locality of the hotel, turned out to be 9,000 feet
lower. Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated,
that, above a certain pointy the higher a point seems
to be^ the lower it actually is. Our ascent itself was
a great achievement, but this contribution to science
was an inconceivably greater matter.

158 A Tramp Abroad

Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower
temperature the higher and higher you go, and hence
the apparent anomaly. I answer that I do not base
my theory upon what the boiling water does, but
upon what a boiled thermometer says. You can't
go behind the thermometer.

I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and
apparently all the rest of the Alpine world, from
that high place. All the circling horizon was piled
high with a mighty tumult of snowy crests. One
might have imagined he saw before him the tented
camps of a beleaguering host of Brobdingnagians.

But lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that
wonderful upright wedge, the Matterhorn. Its pre-
cipitous sides were powdered over with snow, and
the upper half hidden in thick clouds which now
and then dissolved to cobweb films and gave brief
glimpses of the imposing tower as through a veil.
A little later the Matterhorn took to himself the
semblance of a volcano ; he was stripped naked to
his apex — around this circled vast wreaths of white
cloud which strung slowly out and streamed away
slantwise toward the sun, a twenty-mile stretch of
rolling and tumbling vapor, and looking just as if it

NOTB— I had the very unusual luck to catch one little momentary
glimpse of the Matterhorn wholly unencumbered by clouds. I leveled
my photographic apparatus at it without the loss of an instant, and
should have got an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered. It
was my purpose to draw this photc^aph all by myself for my book, but
was obliged to put the mountain part ot it into the hands of the pro-
fessional artist because I found I could not do landscape well.

A Tramp Abroad I39

were pouring out of a crater. Later again, one of
the mountain's sides was clean and clear, and
another side densely clothed from base to summit
in thick smoke-like cloud which feathered off and
blew around the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke
around the corners of a burning building. The
Matterhorn is always experimenting, and always gets
up fine effects, too. In the sunset, when all the
lower world is palled in gloom, it points toward
heaven out of the pervading blackness like a finger
of fire. In the sunrise — well, they say it is very
fine in the sunrise.

Authorities agree that there is no such tremendous
" layout " of snowy Alpine magnitude, grandeur, and
sublimity to be seen from any other accessible point
as the tourist may see from the summit of the
Riffelberg. Therefore, let the tourist rope himself
up and go there ; for I have shown that with nerve,
caution, and judgment, the thing can be done.

I wish to add one remark, here, — in parentheses,
so to speak, — suggested by the word *" snowy,"
which I have just used. We have all seen hills and
mountains and levels with snow on them, and so we
think we know all the aspects and effects produced by
snow. But indeed we do not until we have seen the
Alps. Possibly mass and distance add something
— at any rate, something is added. Among other
noticeable things, there is a dazzling, intense white-
ness about the distant Alpine snow, when the sun is
on it, which one recognizes as peculiar, and not

140 A Tramp Abroad

familiar to the eye. The snow which one is accus-
tomed to has a tint to it, — painters usually give it a
bluish casti — but there is no perceptible tint to the
distant Alpine snow when it is trying to look its
whitest. As to the unimaginable splendor of it when
the sun is blazing down on it, — well, it simply is
unimaginable*

CHAPTER X.

A GUIDE-BOOK is a queer thing. The reader has
just seen what a man who undertakes the great
ascent from Zermatt to the Riffelberg hotel must
experience. Yet Baedeker makes these strange
statements concerning this matter :

1. Distance, — 3 hours.

2. The road cannot be mistaken.

3. Guide unnecessary.

4. Distance from Riffelberg Hotel to the Gorner
Grat, one hour and a half.

5. Ascent simple and easy. Guide unnecessary

6. Elevation of Zermatt above sea level, 5,315 feet.

7. Elevation of Riffelberg Hotel above sea level,
8,429 feet.

8. Elevation of the Gorner Grat above sea level,
10,289 feet.

I have pretty effectually throttled these errors by
sending him the following demonstrated facts :

1. Distance from Zermatt to Riffelberg hotel, 7
days.

2. The road can be mistaken. If I am the first
that did it, I want the credit of it, too.

(I4X)

142 A Tramp Abroad

3. Guides are necessary, for none but a native
can read those finger-boards.

4. The estimate of the elevation of the several
localities above sea level is pretty correct — for
Baedeker. He only misses it about a hundred and
eighty or ninety thousand feet.

I found my arnica invaluable. My men were
suffering excruciatingly, from the friction of sitting
down so much. During two or three days, not one
of them was able to do more than lie down or walk
about; yet so effective was the arnica, that on the
fourth all were able to sit up. I consider that, more
than to anything else, I owe the success of our great
undertaking to arnica and paregoric.

My men being restored to health and strength,
my main perplexity, now, was how to get them
dowi^ the mountain again. I was not willing to ex-
pose the brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and
hardships of that fearful route again if it could be
helped. First I thought of balloons; but, of course,
I had to give that idea up, for balloons were not
procurable. I thought of several other expedients,
but upon consideration discarded them, for cause.
But at last I hit it. I was aware that the movement
of glaciers is an established fact, for I had read it in
Baedeker ; so I resolved to take passage for Zermatt
on the great Gorner Glacier.

Very good. The next thing was, how to get
down to the glacier comfortably, — for the mule-
road to it was long, and winding, and wearisome.

A Tramp Abroad 143

I set my mind at work, and soon tliought out a plan.
One looks straight down upon the vast frozen river
called the Gorner Glacier, from the Gorner Grat, a
sheer precipice i,200 feet high. We had 154 um-
brellas, — and what is an umbrella but a parachute?

I mentioned this noble idea to Harris, with enthu-
siasm, and was about to order the Expedition to
form on the Gorner Grat, with their umbrellas, and
prepare for flight by platoons, each platoon in com-
mand of a guide, when Harris stopped me and
urged me not to be too hasty. He asked me if this
method of descending the Alps had ever been tried
before. I said no, I had not heard of an instance.
Then, in his opinion, it was a matter of considerable
gravity ; in his opinion it would not be well to send
the whole coriimand over the cliff at once ; a better
way would be to send down a single individual, first»
and see how he fared.

I saw the wisdom of this idea instantly. I said as
much, and thanked my agent cordially, and told
him to take his umbrella and try the thing right
away, and wave his hat when he got down, if he
struck in a soft place, and then I would ship the rest
right along.

Harris was greatly touched with this mark of con-
fidence, and said so, in a voice that had a percepti-
ble tremble in it; but at the same time he said he
did not feel himself worthy of so conspicuous a
favor; that it might cause jealousy in the command,
for there were plenty who would not hesitate to say

144 A Tramp Abroad

he had used underhanded means to get the appoint-
ment, whereas his conscience would bear him wit-
ness that he had not sought it at all, nor even, in
his secret heart, desired it.

I said these words did him extreme credit, but
that he must not throw away the imperishable dis-
tinction of being the first man to descend an Alp
per parachute, simply to save the feelings of some
envious underlings. No, I said, he must accept the
appointment, — it was no longer an invitation, it was
a command.

He thanked me with effusion, and said that put-
ting the thing in this form removed every objection.
He retired, and soon returned with his umbrella, his
eyes flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid
with joy. Just then the head guide passed along.
Harris' expression changed to one of infinite tender-
ness, and he said :

•* That man did me a cruel injury four days ago,
and I said in my heart he should live to perceive
and confess that the only noble revenge a man can
take upon his enemy is to return good for evil. I
resign in his favor. Appoint him."

I threw my arms around the generous fellow and
said:

•• Harris, you are the noblest soul that lives. You
shall not regret this sublime act, neither shall the
world fail to know of it. You shall have oppor-
tunities far transcending this one, too, if I live, —
remember that."

A Tramp Abroad 145

I called the head guide to me and appointed him on
the spot. But the thing aroused no enthusiasm in him.
He did not take to the idea at all. He said:

••Tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the
Gorner Grat ! Excuse me, there are a great many
pleasanter roads to the devil than that."

Upon a discussion of the subject with him, it ap-
peared that he considered the project distinctly and
decidedly dangerous. I was not convinced, yet I
was not willing to try the experiment in any risky
way — that is, in a way that might cripple the
strength and efficiency of the Expedition. I was
about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to try
it on the Latinist.

He was called in. But he declined, on the plea
of inexperience, diffidence in public, lack of curi-
osity, and I don't know what all. Another man
declined on account of a cold in the head ; thought
he ought to avoid exposure. Another could not
jump well — never could jump well — did not believe
he could jump so far without long and patient prac-
tice. Another was afraid it was going to rain, and
his umbrella had a hole in it. Everybody had an
excuse. The result was what the reader has by this
time guessed: the most magnificent idea that was
ever conceived had to be abandoned, from sheer
lack of a person with enterprise enough to carry it
out. Yes, I actually had to give that thing up, —
whilst doubtless I should live to see somebody use
it and take all the credit from me.
10»*

146 A Tramp Abroad

Well, I had to go overland — there was no other
way. I marched the Expedition down the steep and
tedious mule-path and took up as good a position as
I could upon the middle of the glacier — because
Baedeker said the middle part travels the fastest.
As a measure of economy, however, I put some of
the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts, to go
as slow freight.

I waited and waited, but the glacier did not move.
Night was coming on, the darkness began to gather
— still we did not budge. It occurred to me then,
that there might be a time-table in Baedeker; it
would be well to find out the hours of starting. I
called for the book — it could not be found. Brad-
shaw would certainly contain a time-table ; but no
Bradshaw could be found.

Very well, I must make the best of the situation.
So I pitched the tents, picketed the animals, milked
the cows, had supper, paregoricked the men, estab-
lished the watch, and went to bed — with orders to
call me as soon as we came in sight of Zermatt.

I awoke about half-past ten next morning, and
looked around. We hadn't budged a peg! At
first I could not understand it ; then it occurred to
me that the old thing must be aground. So I cut
down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard
and another on the port side, and fooled away up-
wards of three hours trying to spar her off. But it
was no use. She was half a mile wide and fifteen
or twenty miles long, and there was no telling just

A Tramp Abroad 147

whereabouts she was aground. The men began to
show uneasiness, too, and presently they came flying
to me with ashy faces, saying she had sprung a leak.

Nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time
saved us from another panic. I ordered them to
show me the place. They led me to a spot where
a huge bowlder lay in a deep pool of clear and
brilliant water. It did look like a pretty bad leak,
but I kept that to myself. I made a pump and set
the men to work to pump out the glacier. We
made a success of it. I perceived, then, that it
was not a leak at all. This bowlder had descended
from a precipice and stopped on the ice in the
middle of the glacier, and the sun had warmed it up,
every day, and consequently it had melted its way
deeper and deeper into the ice, until at last it re-
posed, as we had found it, in a deep pool of the
clearest and coldest water.

Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted
eagerly for the time-table. There was none. The
book simply said the glacier was moving all the
time. This was satisfactory, so I shut up the book
and chose a good position to view the scenery as we
passed along. I stood there some time enjoying
the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did
not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. I said
to myself, "This confounded old thing's aground
again, sure," — and opened Baedeker to see if I
could run across any remedy for these annoying
interruptions. I soon found a sentence which threw

148 A Tramp Abroad

a dazzling light upon the matter. It said, *'The
Gomer Glacier travels at an average rate of a little
less than an inch a day." I have seldom felt so
outraged. I have seldom had my confidence so
wantonly betrayed. I made a small calculation: i
inch a day, say 30 feet a year; estimated distance to
Zermatt, 3 1-18 miles. Time required to go by
glacier, a little over five hundred years / I said to
myself, ** I can walk it quicker — and before I will
patronize such a fraud as this, I will do it."

When I revealed to Harris the fact that the
passenger-part of this glacier, — the central part, —
the lightning-express part, so to speak, — was not
due in Zermatt till the summer of 2378, and that the
baggage, coming along the slow edge, would not
arrive until some generations later, he burst out with :

•'That is European management, all over! An
inch a day — think of that! Five hundred years to
go a trifle over three miles I But I am not a bit
surprised. It's a Catholic glacier. You can tell by
the look of it. And the management."

I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme
end of it was in a Catholic canton.

•*Well, then, it's a government glacier," said
Harris. ** It's all the same. Over here the govern-
ment runs everything, — so everything's slow; slow,
and ill-managed. But with us, everything's done
by private enterprise — and then there ain't much
lolling around, you can depend on it. I wish Tom
Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab

A Tramp Abroad 149

once, — you'd see it take a different gait from
this."

I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if
there was trade enough to justify it.

•'He'd make trade," said Harris. *• That's the
difference between governments and individuals.
Governments don't care, individuals do. Tom Scott
would take all the trade ; in two years Corner stock
would go to 200, and inside of two more you would
see all the other glaciers under the hammer for
taxes." After a reflective pause, Harris added,
* * A little less than an inch a day ; a little less than
sxi inch, mind you. Well, I'm losing my reverence
for glaciers."

I was feeling much the same way myself. I have
traveled by canal-boat, ox-wagon, raft, and by the
Ephesus and Smyrna railway; but when it comes
down to good solid honest slow motion, I bet my
money on the glacier. As a means of passenger
transportation, I consider the glacier a failure; but
as a vehicle for slow freight, I think she fills the
bill. In the matter of putting the fine shades on
that line of business, I judge she could teach the
Germans something.

I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for
the land journey to Zermatt. At this moment a
most interesting find was made; a dark object,
bedded in the glacial ice, was cut out with the ice-
axes, and it proved to be a piece of the undressed
skin of some animal, — a hair trunk, perhaps ; but a

150 A Tramp Abroad

close inspection disabled the hair trunk theory, and
further discussion and examination exploded it en-
tirely , — that is, in the opinion of all the scientists
except the one who had advanced it. This one
clung to his theory with the affectionate fidelity
characteristic of originators of scientific theories,
and afterward won many of the first scientists of the
age to his view, by a very able pamphlet which he
wrote, entitied, " Evidences going to show that the
hair trunk, in a wild state, belonged to the early
glacial period, and roamed the wastes of chaos in
company with the cave bear, primeval man, and the
other Oolitics of the Old Silurian family."

Each of our scientists had a theory of his own,
and put forward an animal of his own as a candidate
for the skin. I sided with the geologist of the Expe-
dition in the belief that this patch of skin had once
helped to cover a Siberian elephant, in some old
forgotten age — but we divided there, the geologist
believing that this discovery proved that Siberia had
formerly been located where Switzerland is now,
whereas I held the opinion that it merely proved
that the primeval Swiss was not the dull savage he is
represented to have been, but was a being of high
intellectual development, who liked to go to the
menagerie.

We arrived that evening, after many hardships
and adventures, in some fields close to the great ice-
arch where the mad Visp boils and surges out from
under the foot of the great Gorner Glacier, and here

A Tramp Abroad 151

we camped, our perils over and our magnificent
undertaking successfully completed. We marched
into Zermatt the next day, and were received with
the most lavish honors and applause. A document,
signed and sealed by all the authorities, was given
to me which established and endorsed the fact that I
had made the ascent of the Riffelberg. This I wear
around my neck, and it will be buried with me
when I am no more.

CHAPTER XL

I AM not so ignorant about glacial movement,
nowy as I was when I took passage on the
Corner Glacier. I have** read up" since. I am
aware that these vast bodies of ice do not travel at
the same rate of speed ; whilst the Gorner Glacier
makes less than an inch a day, the Unter-Aar Glacier
makes as much as eight ; and still other glaciers are
said to go twelve, sixteen, and even twenty inches a
day. One writer says that the slowest glacier
travels twenty-five feet a year, and the fastest 400.

What is a glacier? It is easy to say it looks like
a frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding
gorge or gully between mountains. But that gives
no notion of its vastness. For it is sometimes 600
feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers 600
feet deep ; no, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet,
and sometimes fifty feet deep ; we are not quite able
to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river 600 feet deep.

The glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but
has deep swales and swelling elevations, and some-
times has the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent
billows were frozen hard in the instant of their most

(15a)

A Tramp Abroad 153

violent motion ; the glacier's surface is not a flawless
mass, but is a river with cracks or crevasses, some
narrow, some gaping wide. Many a man, the victim
of a slip or a misstep, has plunged down one of
these and met his death. Men have been fished out
of them alive, but it was when they did not go to a
great depth; the cold of the great depths would
quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or un-
hurt. These cracks do not go straight down ; one
can seldom see more than twenty to forty feet down
them; consequently men who have disappeared in
them have been sought for, in the hope that they
had stopped within helping distance, whereas their
case, in most instances, had really been hopeless
from the beginning.

In 1 864 a party of tourists was descending Mont
Blanc, and while picking their way over one of the
mighty glaciers of that lofty region, roped together,
as was proper, a young porter disengaged himself
from the line and started across an ice-bridge which
spanned a crevasse. It broke under him with a
crashj and he disappeared. The others could not
see how deep he had gone, so it might be worth
while to try and rescue him. A brave young guide
named Michel Payot volunteered.

Two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and
he bore the end of a third one in his hand to tie to
the victim in case he found him. He was lowered
into the crevasse, he descended deeper and deeper *
between the clear blue walls of solid ice, he ap-

154 A Tramp Abroad

proached a bend in the crack and disappeared under
it. Down, and still down, he went, into this pro-
found grave; when he had reached a depth of
eighty feet he passed under another bend in the
crack, and thence descended eighty feet lower, as
between perpendicular precipices. Arrived at this
stage of 1 60 feet below the surface of the glacier, he
peered through the twilight dimness and perceived
that the chasm took another turn and stretched
away at a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its
course was lost in darkness. What a place that was
to be in — especially if that leather belt should
break ! The compression of the belt threatened to
suffocate the intrepid fellow ; he called to his friends
to draw him up, but could not make them hear.
They still lowered him, deeper and deeper. Then
he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could ;
his friends understood, and dragged him out of
those icy jaws of death.

Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it
down 200 feet, but it found no bottom. It came up
covered with congelations — evidence enough that
even if the poor porter reached the bottom with
unbroken bones, a swift death from cold was sure,
anyway.

A glacier is a stupendous, ever progressing,
resistless plow. It pushes ahead of it masses of
bowlders which are packed together, and they
stretch across the gorge, right in front of it, like a
long grave or a long, sharp roof. This is called a

A Tramp Abroad 155

moraine. It also shoves out a moraine along each
side of its course.

Imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not
so huge as were some that once existed. For in-
stance, Mr. Whymper says:

•* At some very remote period the Valley of Aosta
was occupied by a vast glacier, which flowed down
its entire length from Mont Blanc to the plain of
Piedmont, remained stationary, or nearly so, at its
mouth for many centuries, and deposited there
enormous masses of debris. The length of this
glacier exceeded eighty mileSy and it drained a basin
twenty-five to thirty-five miles across, bounded by
the highest mountains in the Alps. The great peaks
rose several thousand feet above the glaciers, and
then, as now, shattered by sun and frost, poured
down their showers of rocks and stones, in witness
of which there are the immense piles of angular
fragments that constitute the moraines of Ivrea.

•* The moraines around Ivrea are of extraordinary
dimensions. That which was on the left bank of
the glacier is about thirteen miles long, and in some
places rises to a height of two thousand one hundred
and thirty feet above the floor of the valley! The
terminal moraines (those which are pushed in front
of the glaciers) cover something like twenty square
miles of country. At the mouth of the Valley of
Aosta, the thickness of the glacier must have been
at least two thousand feet, and its width, at that part,
five miles and a quarter**

156 A Tramp Abroad

It is not easy to get at a comprehension of a
mass of ice like that. If one could cleave off the
butt end of such a glacier — an oblong block two
or three miles wide by five and a quarter long and
2,000 feet thick — he could completely hide the city
of New York under it, and Trinity steeple would
only stick up into it relatively as far as a shingle nail
would stick up into the bottom of a Saratoga trunk.

••The bowlders from Mont Blanc, upon the plain
below Ivrea, assure us that the glacier which trans-
ported them existed for a prodigious length of time.
Their present distance from the cliffs from which
they were derived is about 420,000 feet, and if we
assume that they traveled at the rate of 400 feet per
annum, their journey must have occupied them no
less than 1055 years! In all probability they did
not travel so fast."

Glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their charac-
teristic snail-pace. A marvelous spectacle is pre-
sented then. Mi". Whymper refers to a case which
occurred in Iceland in 1721 :

*• It seems that in the neighborhood of the moun-
tain Koilugja, large bodies of water formed under-
neath, or within the glaciers (either on account of
the interior heat of the earth, or from other causes),
and at length acquired irresistible power, tore the
glaciers from their mooring on the land, and swept
them over every obstacle into the sea. Prodigious
masses of ice were thus boruv* for a distance of about
ten miles over land in the space of a few hours ; and

A Tramp Abroad 157

their bulk was so enormous that they covered the
sea for seven miles from the shore, and remained
aground in 600 feet of water 1 The denudation of
the land was upon a grand scale. All superficial
accumulations were swept away, and the bed-rock
was exposed. It was described, in graphic language,
how all irregularities and depressions were obliter-
ated, and a smooth surface of several miles area laid
bare, and that this area had the appearance of
having h^en planed by a planed

The account translated from the Icelandic says
that the mountain-like ruins of this majestic glacier
so covered the sea that as far as the eye could reach
no open water was discoverable, even from the
highest peaks. A monster wall or barrier of ice was
built across a considerable stretch of land, too, by
this strange irruption :

*' One can form some idea of the altitude of this
barrier of ice when it is mentioned that from Hof-
dabrekka farm, which lies high up on a fjeld, one
could not see Hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell
640 feet in height; but in order to do so had to
clamber up a mountain slope east of Hofdabrekka
1,200 feet high."

These things will help the reader to understand
why it is that a man who keeps company with gla-
ciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.
The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take
every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-
importance to zero if he will only remain within the

158 A Tramp Abroad

influence of their sublime presence long enough to
give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.

The Alpine glaciers move — that is granted, now,
by everybody. But there was a time when people
scoffed at the idea; they said you might as well ex-
pect leagues of solid rock to crawl along the ground
as expect solid leagues of ice to do it. But proof
after proof was furnished, and finally the world had
to believe.

The wise men not only said the glacier moved,
but they timed its movement. They ciphered out a
glacier's gait, and then said confidently that it would
travel just so far in so many years. There is record
of a striking and curious example of the accuracy
which may be attained in these reckonings.

In 1820 the ascent of Mont Blanc was attempted
by a Russian and two Englishmen, with seven
guides. They had reached a prodigious altitude,
and were approaching the summit, when an avalanche
swept several of the party down a sharp slope of
two hundred feet and hurled five of them (all
guides) into one of the crevasses of a glacier. The
life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer
which was strapped to his back — it bridged the
crevasse and suspended him until help came. The
alpenstock or baton of another saved its owner in a
similar way. Three men were lost — Pierre Balmat,
Pierre Carrier, and Auguste Tairraz. They had
been hurled down into the fathomless great deeps of
the crevasse.

A Tramp Abroad 159

Dr. Forbes, the English geologist, had made fre-
quent visits to the Mont Blanc region, and had given
much attention to the disputed question of the
movement of glaciers. During one of these visits
he completed his estimates of the rate of movement
of the glacier which had swallowed up the three
guides, and uttered the prediction that the glaciei
would deliver up its dead at the foot of the mountain
thirty-five years from the time of the accident, or
possibly forty.

A dull, slow journey — a movement 'imperceptible
to any eye — but it was proceeding, nevertheless,
and without cessation. It was a journey which a
rolling stone would make in a few seconds — the
lofty point of departure was visible from the village
below in the valley.

The prediction cut curiously close to the truth ;
forty-one years after the catastrophe, the remains
were cast forth at the foot of the glacier.

I find an intei:esting account of the matter in the
'•Histoiredu Mont Blanc," by Stephen d'Arve. I
will condense this account, as follows :

On the 1 2th of August, 1861, at the hour of the
close of mass, a guide arrived out of breath at the
mairie of Chamonix, and bearing on his shoulders a
very lugubrious burden. It was a sack filled with
human remains which he had gathered from the
orifice of a crevasse in the Glacier des Bossons. He
conjectured that these were remains of the victims of
the catastrophe of 1 820, and a minute inquest, imme-

160 A Tramp Abroad

diatdy instituted by the local authorities, soon
demonstrated the correctness of his supposition.
The contents of the sack were spread upon a long
table, and officially inventoried, as follows:

Portions of three human skulls. Several tufts of
black and blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished
with fine white teeth. A forearm and hand, all the
fingers of the latter intact. The flesh was white and
fresh, and both the arm and hand preserved a degree
of flexibility in the articulations.

The ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and
the stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged
after forty-one years. A left foot, the flesh white
and fresh.

Along with these fragments were portions of
waistcoats, hats, hob-nailed shoes, and other clothing;
a wing of a pigeon, with black feathers ; a fragment
of an alpenstock ; a tin lantern ; and lastiy , a boiled
leg of mutton, the only flesh among all the remains
that exhaled an unpleasant odor. The guide said
that the mutton had no odor when he took it from
the glacier; an hour's exposure to the sun had
already begun the work of decomposition upon it.

Persons were called {or, to identify these poor
pathetic relics, and a touching scene ensued. Two
men were still living who had witnessed the grim
catastrophe of nearly half a century before, — Marie
Couttet (saved by his baton) and Julien Davouassoux
(saved by the barometer) . These aged men entered
and approached the table. Davouassoux, more

A Tramp Abroad l6l

than eighty years old, contemplated the mournful
remains mutely and with a vacant eye, for his intel-
ligence and his memory were torpid with age ; but
Couttet's faculties were still perfect at seventy-two,
and he exhibited strong emotion. He said :

•'Pierre Balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat.
This bit of skull, with the tuft of blond hair, was
his ; this is his hat. Pierre Carrier was very dark ;
this skull was his, and this felt hat. This is Balmat's
hand, I remember it so well!" and the old man
bent down and kissed it reverently, then closed his
fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp, crying out,
* * I could never have dared to believe that before
quitting this world it would be granted me to press
once more the hand of one of those brave comrades,
the hand of my good friend Balmat."

There is something weirdly pathetic about the
picture of that white-haired veteran greeting with
his loving handshake this friend who had been dead
forty years. When these hands had met last, they
were alike in the softness and freshness of youth ;
now, one was brown and wrinkled and horny with
age, while the other was still as young and fair and
blemishless as if those forty years had come and
gone in a single moment, leaving no mark of their
passage. Time had gone on, in the one case; it
had stood still in the other. A man who has not
seen a friend for a generation, keeps him in mind
always as he saw him last, and is somehow sur-
prised, and is also shocked, to see the aging change
1U«

162 A Tramp Abroad

the years have wrought when he sees him again.
Marie Couttet's experience, in finding his friend's
hand unaltered from the image of it which he had
carried in his memory for forty years, is an experi-
ence which stands alone in the history of man,
perhaps.

Couttet identified other relics :

••This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz. He
carried the cage of pigeons which we proposed to
set free upon the summit. Here is the wing of one
of those pigeons. And here is the fragment of my
broken baton ; it was by grace of that baton that
my life was saved. Who could have told me that I
should one day have the satisfaction to look again
upon this bit of wood that supported me above the
grave that swallowed up my unfortunate com-
panions!"

No portions of the body of Tairraz had been
found. A diligent search was made, but without
result. However, another search was instituted a
year later, and this had better success. Many frag-
ments of clothing which had belonged to the lost
guides were discovered ; also, part of a lantern, and
a green veil with blood-stains on it. But the inter-
esting feature was this :

One of the searchers came suddenly upon a
sleeved arm projecting from a crevice in the ice-
wall, with the hand outstretched as if offering greet-
ing! ** The nails of this white hand were still rosy,
arid the pose of the extended fingers seemed to

A Tramp Abroad I63

express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light
of day."

The hand and arm were alone; there was no
trunk. After being removed from the ice the flesh-
tints quickly faded out and the rosy nails took on
the alabaster hue of death. This was the third right
hand found; therefore, all three of the lost men
were accounted for, beyond cavil or question.

Dr. Hamel was the Russian gentleman of the
party which made the ascent at the time of the
famous disaster. He left Chamonix as soon as he
conveniently could after the descent; and as he had
shown a chilly indifference about the calamity, and
offered neither sympathy nor assistance to the
widows and orphans, he carried with him the cordial
execrations of the whole community. Four months
before the first remains were found, a Chamonix
guide named Balmat, — a relative of one of the lost
men, — was in London, and one day encountered a
hale old gentleman in the British Museum, who said :

"I overheard your name. Are you from Cha-
monix, Monsieur Balmat?''

••Yes, sir."

*• Haven't they found the bodies of my three
guides, yet? I am Dr. Hamel."

•* Alas, no, monsieur."

•* Well, you'll find them, sooner or later."

•* Yes, it is the opinion of Dr. Forbes and Mr.
Tyndall, that the glacier will sooner or later restore
to us the remains of the unfortunate victims."

164 A Tramp Abroad

"Without a doubt, without a doubt. And it will
be a great thing for Chamonix, in the matter of
attracting tourists. You can get up a museum with
those remains that will draw!"

This savage idea has not improved the odor of
Dr. Hamel's name in Chamonix by any means.
But after all, the man was sound on human nature.
His idea was conveyed to the public officials of
Chamonix, and they gravely discussed it around the
official council-table. They were only prevented
from carrying it into execution by the determined
opposition of the friends and descendants of the
lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains
Christian burial, and succeeded in their purpose.

A close watch had to be kept upon all the poor
remnants and fragments, to prevent embezzlement.
A few accessory odds and ends were sold. Rags
and scraps of the coarse clothing were parted with
at a rate equal to about twenty dollars a yard ; a
piece of a lantern and one or two other trifles
brought nearly their weight in gold ; and an English-
man offered a pound sterling for a single breeches-
button.

THE MATTERHORN

CHAPTER XII.

ONE of the most memorable of all the Alpine
catastrophes was that of July, 1865, on the
Matterhorn, — already slightly referred to, a few
pages back. The details of it are scarcely known in
America. To the vast majority of readers they are
not known at all. Mr. Whymper's account is the
only authentic one. I will import the chief portion
of it into this book, partly because of its intrinsic
interest, and partly because it gives such a vivid
idea of what the perilous pastime of Alp-climbing
is. This was Mr. Whymper's ninth attempt during
a series of years, to vanquish that steep and stub-
born pillar of rock; it succeeded, the other eight
were failures. No man had ever accomplished the
ascent before, though the attempts had been
numerous.

MR. WHYMPER'S NARRATIVE

We started from Zermatt on the 13th of July, at
half-past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless
morning. We were eight in number — Croz (guide) ,
old Peter Taugwalder (guide) and his two sons;
Lord F. Douglas, Mr. Hadow, Rev. Mr. Hudson,

(165)

166 A Tramp Abroad

and I. To ensure steady motion, one tourist and
one native walked together. The youngest Taug-
walder fell to my share. The wine-bags also fell to
my lot to carry, and throughout the day, after each
drink, I replenished them secretly with water, so
that at the next halt they were found fuller than
before I This was considered a good omen, and
little short of miraculous.

On the first day we did not intend to ascend to
any great height, and we mounted, accordingly,
very leisurely. Before twelve o'clock we had found
a good position for the tent, at a height of 1 1 ,000
feet. We passed the remaining hours of daylight —
some basking in the sunshine, some sketching, some
collecting; Hudson made tea, I coffee, and at length
we retired, each one to his blanket-bag.

We assembled together before dawn on the 14th
and started directiy it was light enough to move.
One of the young ^augwalders returned to Zermatt.
In a few minutes we turned the rib which had inter-
cepted the view of the Eastern face from our tent
platform. The whole of this great slope was now
revealed, rising for 3,000 feet like a huge natural
staircase. Some parts were more, and others were
less easy, but we were not once brought to a halt by
any serious impediment, for when an obstruction
was met in front it could always be turned to the
right or to the left. For the greater part of the
way there was no occasion, indeed, for the rope,
and sometimes Hudson led, sometimes myself.

A Tramp Abroad 167

At 6.20 we had attained a height of 12,800
feet, and halted for half an hour; we then con-
tinued the ascent without a break until 9.55, when
we stopped for fifty minutes, at a height of 14,000
feet.

We had now arrived at the foot of that part
, vrhich, seen from the Riffelberg, seems perpendicular
or overhanging. We could no longer continue on
the eastern side. For a little distance we ascended
by snow upon the arite — that is, the ridge — then
turned over to the right, or northern side. The
work became difficult, and required caution. Jn
some places there was little to hold ; the general slope
of the mountain was less than 40 degrees, and snow
had accumulated in, and had filled up, the interstices
of the rock-face, leaving only occasional fragments
projecting here and there. These were at times
covered with a thin film of ice. It was a place
which any fair mountaineer might pass in safety.
We bore away nearly horizontally for about 400
feet, then ascended directly toward the summit for
about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge
which descends toward Zermatt. A long stride
round a rather awkward corner brought us to snow
once more. The last doubt vanished ! The Matter-
horn was ours ! Nothing but 200 feet of easy snow
remained to be surmounted.

The higher we rose, the more intense became the
excitement. The slope eased off , at length we could
be detached, and Croz and I, dashing away, ran a

168 A Tramp Abroad

neck-and-neck race, which ended in a dead heat.
At 1.40 P. M,, the world was at our feet> and the
Matterhorn was conquered !

The others arrived. Croz now took the tent-pole,
and planted it in the highest snow. "Yes," we
said, '* there is the flag-staff, but where is the
flag?" " Here it is," he answered, pulling off his
blouse and fixing it to the stick. It made a poor
flag, and there was no wind to float it out, yet it
was seen all around. They saw it at Zermatt — at
the Riffel — in the Val Tournanche. . . •

We remained on the summit for one hour —

"One crowded hour of glorious life."

It passed away too quickly, and we began to
prepare for the descent.

Hudson and I consulted as to the best and safest
arrangement of the party. We agreed that it was
best for Croz to go first, and Hadow second ; Hud-
son, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of
foot, wished to be third ; Lord Douglas was placed
next, and old Peter, the strongest of the remainder,
after him. I suggested to Hudson that we should
attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the
difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, as an
additional protection. He approved the idea, but it
was not definitely decided that it should be done.
The party was being arranged in the above order
whilst I was sketching the summit, and they had
finished, and were waiting for me to be tied in line,
when some one remembered that our names had not

A Tramp Abroad 169

been left in a bottle. They requested me to write
them down, and moved off while it was being done.

A few minutes afterward I tied myself to young
Peter, ran down after the others, and caught them
just as they were commencing the descent of the
difficult part. Great care was being taken. Only
one man was moving at a time ; when he was firmly
planted the next advanced, and so on. They had
not, however, attached the additional rope to rocks,
and nothing was said about it. The suggestion was
not made for my own sake, and I am not sure that
it even occurred to me again. For some little dis-
tance we two followed the others, detached from
them, and should have continued so had not Lord
Douglas asked me, about 3 P.M., to tie on to old
Peter, as he feared, he said, that Taugwalder would
not be able to hold his ground if a slip occurred.

A few minutes later, a sharp-eyed lad ran into the
Monte Rosa Hotel, at Zermatt, saying that he had
seen an avalanche fall from the summit of the Mat-
terhorn on to the Matterhorn glacier. The boy was
reproved for telling idle stories ; he was right, never-
theless, and this was what he saw.

Michel Croz had laid aside his axe, and in order
to give Mr. Hadow greater security, was absolutely
taking hold of his legs, and putting his feet, one by
one, into their proper positions. As far as I know,
no one was actually descending. I cannot speak
with certainty, because the two leading men were
partially hidden from my sight by an intervening

170 A Tramp Abroad

mass of rocky but it is my belief, from the move*
ments of their shoulders, that Croz, having done as
I have said, was in the act of turning round to go
down a step or two himself; at this moment Mr.
Hadow slipped, fell against him, and knocked him
over. I heard one startled exclamation from Croz,
then saw him and Mr. Hadow flying downwards ; in
another moment Hudson was dragged from his
steps, and Lord Douglas immediately after him.
All this was the work of a moment. Immediately
we heard Croz's exclamation, old Peter and I
planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks would per-
mit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk
came on us both as on one man. We held ; but
the rope broke midway between Taugwalder and
Lord Francis Douglas. For a few seconds we saw
our unfortunate companions sliding downwards on
their backs, and spreading out their hands, endeavor-
ing to save themselves. They passed from our
sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell
from precipice to precipice on to the Matterhom
glacier below, a distance of nearly 4,000 feet in
height. From the moment the rope broke it was
impossible to help them. So perished our comrades !

For more than two hours afterwards I thought
almost every moment that the next would be my
last; for the Taugwalders, utterly unnerved, were
not only incapable of giving assistance, but were in
such a state that a slip might have been expected

A Tramp Abroad 171

from lliem at any moment. After a time we were
able to do that which should have been done at first,
and fixed rope to firm rocks, in addition to being
tied together. These ropes were cut from time to
time, and were left behind. Even with their assur-
ance the men were afraid to proceed, and several
times old Peter turned, with ashy face and faltering
limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis, •' / cannot T'
About 6 P. M., we arrived at the snow upon the
ridge descending towards Zermatt, and all peril
was over. We frequentiy looked, but in vain, for
traces of our unfortunate companions ; we bent over
the ridge and cried to them, but no sound returned.
Convinced at last that they were neither within sight
nor hearing, we ceased from our useless efforts;
and, too cast down for speech, silently gathered up
our things, and the littie effects of those who were
lost, and then completed the descent.

Such IS Mr. Whymper's graphic and thrilling
narrative. Zermatt gossip darkly hints that the
eldjer Taugwalder cut the rope, when the accident
occurred, in order to preserve himself from being
dragged into the abyss ; but Mr. Whymper says that
the ends of the rope showed no evidence of cutting,
but only of breaking. He adds that if Taugwalder
had had the disposition to cut the rope, he would
not have had time to do it, the accident was so
sudden and unexpected.

Lord Douglas' body has never been found. It

172 A Tramp Abroad

probably lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the
face of the mighty precipice. Lord Douglas was a
youth of nineteen. The three other victims fell
nearly 4,000 feet, and their bodies lay together upon
the glacier when found by Mr. Whymper and
the other searchers the next morning. Their graves
are beside the little church in Zermatt

CHAPTER XIII.

SWITZERLAND is simply a large, humpy, solid
rock, with a thin skin of grass stretched over
it. Consequently, they do not dig graves, they
blast them out with powder and fuse. They cannot
afford to have large graveyards, the grass skin is too
circumscribed and too valuable. It is all required
for the support of the living.

The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about
one-eighth of an acre. The graves are sunk in the
living rock, and are very permanent ; but occupation
of them is only temporary ; the occupant can only
stay till his grave is needed by a later subject, he
is removed, then, for they do not bury one body on
top of another. As I understand it, a family owns
a grave, just as it owns a house. A man dies and
leaves his house to his son, — and at the same time,
this dead father succeeds to his own father's grave.
He moves out of the house and into the grave, and
his predecessor moves out of the grave and into the
cellar of the chapel. I saw a black box lying in the
churchyard, with skull and cross-bones painted on

(173)

174 A Tramp Abroad

it, and was told that this was used ia transferring
remains to the cellar.

In that cellar the bones and skulls of several
hundreds of former citizens were compactly corded
up. They made a pile i8 feet long, 7 feet high,
and 8 feet wide. I was told that in some of the
receptacles of this kind in the Swiss villages, the
skulls were all marked, and if a man wished to find
the skulls of his ancestors for several generations
back, he could do it by these marks, preserved in
the family records.

An English gentleman who had lived some years
in this region, said it was the cfadle of compulsory
education. But he said that the English idea that
compulsory education would reduce bastardy and in-
temperance was an error — it has not that effect.
He said there was more seduction in the Protestant
than in the Catholic cantons, because the confes-
sional protected the girls. I wonder why it doesn't
protect married women in France and Spain?

This gentleman said that among the poorer
peasants in the Valais, it was common for the
brothers in a family to cast lots to determine which
of them should have the coveted privilege of marry-
ing. Then the lucky one got married, and his
brethren — doomed bachelors , — heroically banded
themselves together to help support the new family.

We left Zermatt in a wagon — and in a rain-
storm, too, — for St. Nicholas about ten o'clock one
morning. Again we passed between those grass-

A Tramp Abroad 175

clad, prodigious cliffs, specked with wee dwellings
peeping over at us from velvety green walls ten and
twelve hundred feet high. It did not seem possible
that the imaginary chamois even could climb those
precipices. Lovers on opposite cliffs probably kiss
through a spy-glass, and correspond with a rifle.

In Switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide
shovel, which scrapes up and turns over the thin
earthy skin of his native rock — and there the man
of the plow is a hero. Now here, by our St.
Nicholas road, was a grave, and it had a tragic
story. A plowman was skinning his farm one
morning, — not the steepest part of it, but still a
steep part — that is, he was not skinning the front
of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves, —
when he absent-mindedly let go of, the plow-handles
to moisten his hands, in the usual way ; he lost his
balance and fell out of his farm backwards; poor
fellow, he never touched anything till he struck
bottom, 1,500 feet below.* We throw a halo of
heroism around the life of the soldier and the sailor,
because of the deadly dangers they are facing all the
time. But we are not used to looking upon farming
as a heroic occupation. This is because we have
not lived in Switzerland.

From St. Nicholas we struck out for Visp, — or
Vispach — on foot. The rain-storms had been at
work during several days, and had done a deal of
damage in Switzerland and Savoy. We came to

♦This was on a Sunday. — M. T,

176 A Tramp Abroad

one place where a stream had changed its course
and plunged down the mountain in a new place,
sweeping everything before it. Two poor but
precious farms by the roadside were ruined. One
was washed clear away, and the bed-rock exposed ; the
other was buried out of sight under a tumbled chaos
of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish. The resistless
might of water was well exemplified. Some sap-
lings which had stood in the way were bent to the
ground, stripped clean of their bark, and buried under
rocky debris. The road had been swept away, too.

In another place, where the road was high up on
the mountain's face, and its outside edge protected
by flimsy masonry, we frequently came across spots
where this masonry had caved off and left dangerous
gaps for mules to get over ; and with still more fre-
quency we found the masonry slightly crumbled,
and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing that there
had been danger of an accident to somebody. When
at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry,
with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle to
regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully
over the dizzy precipice. But there was nobody
down there.

They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in
Switzerland and other portions of Europe. They
wall up both banks with slanting solid stone masonry
- — so that from end to end of these rivers the banks
look like the wharves at St. Louis and other towns
on the Mississippi river.

A Tramp Abroad 177

It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the
shadow of the majestic Alps, that we came across
some little children amusing themselves in what
seemed, at first, a most odd and original way — but
it wasn't; it was in simply a natural and character-
istic way. They were roped together with a string,
they had mimic alpenstocks and ice-axes, and were
climbing a meek and lowly manure pile with a most
blood-curdling amount of care and caution. The
•* guide" at the head of the line cut imaginary
steps, in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a
monkey budged till the step above him was vacated.
If we had waited we should have witnessed an
imaginary accident, no doubt; and we should have
heard the intrepid band hurrah when they made the
summit and looked around upon the ** magnificent
view," and seen them throw themselves down in
exhausted attitudes for a rest in that commanding
situation.

In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver
mining. Of course, the great thing was an accident
in a mine, and there were two **star" parts; that
of the man who fell down the mimic shaft, and that
of the daring hero who was lowered into the depths
to bring him up. I knew one small chap who
always insisted on playing both of these parts, — and
he carried his point. He would tumble into the
shaft and die, and then come to the surface and go
back after his own remains.

It is the smartest boy that gets the hero-part
12««

178 A Tramp Abroad

cvcrjnvhere; he is head guide in Switzerland, head
miner in Nevada, head bull-fighter in Spain, etc. ;
but I knew a preacher's son, seven years old, who
once selected a part for himself compared to which
those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive.
Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary
horse-cars one Sunday — stopped him from playing
captain of an imaginary steamboat next Sunday —
stopped him from leading an imaginary army to
battle the following Sunday — and so on. Finally
the little fellow said :

•* I've tried everything, and they won't any of
them do. What can I play?"

"I hardly know, Jimmy; but you must play
only things that are suitable to the Sabbath day."

Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a
back-room door to see if the children were rightly
employed. He peeped in. A chair occupied the
middle of the room, and on the back of it hung
Jimmy's cap ; one of the little sisters took the cap
down, nibbled at it, then passed it to another small
sister and said, ** Eat of this fruit, for it is good."
The Reverend took in the situation — alas, they were
playing the Expulsion from Eden ! Yet he found
one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself^
**For once Jimmy has yielded the chief rdle — I
have been wronging him, I did not believe there was
so much modesty in him ; I should have expected
him to be either Adam or Eve." This crumb of
comfort lasted but a very little while; he glanced

A Tramp Abroad 179

around and discovered Jimmy standing in an im-
posing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly
frown on his face. What that meant was very plain
— he was personating the Deity I Think of the
guileless sublimity of that idea.

We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven
hours out from St. Nicholas. So we must have
made fully a mile and a half an hour, and it was all
down hill, too, and very muddy at that. We stayed
all night at the Hdtel du Soleil ; I remember it be-
cause the landlady, the portier, the waitress, and the
chambermaid were not separate persons, but were
all contained in one neat and chipper suit of spotless
muslin, and she was the prettiest young creature I
saw in all that region. She was the landlord's
daughter. And I remember that the only native
match to her I saw in all Europe was the young
daughter of the landlord of a village inn in the Black
Forest. Why don't more people in Europe marry
and keep hotel?

Next morning we left with a family of English
friends and went by train to Brevet, and thence by
boat across the lake to Ouchy (Lausanne) .

Ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its
beautiful situation and lovely surroundings, — al-
though these would make it stick long in one's
memory, — but as the place where I caught the
London Times dropping into humor. It was not
aware of it, though. It did not do it on purpose.
An English friend called my attention to this lapse.

180 A Tramp Abroad

and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me.

Think of encountering a grin like this on the face of

that grim journal :

Erratum. — We are requested by Reuter's Telegram Company to
correct an erroneous announcement made in their Brisbane tel^ram of
the 2d inst., published in our impression of the 5th inst., stating that
"Lady Kennedy had given birth to twins, the eldest being a son."
The Company explain that the message they received contained the
words *' Governor of Queensland, twins first son," Being, however,
subsequently informed that 5ur Arthur Kenne<fy was unmarried and that
there must be some mistake, a tdegnqphic repetition was at once
demanded. It has been received to-day (nth inst.) and shows that
the words really telegraphed by Renter's agent were " Governor Queens-
land turns first sod," alluding to the Maryborough-Gympic Railway in
course of construction. The words in italics were mutilated by the tel-
^;raph in transmission from Australia, and reaching the company in the
form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake.

I had always had a deep and reverent compassion
for the sufferings of the "prisoner of Chillon,"
whose story Byron has told in such moving verse ;
so I took the steamer and made pilgrimage to the
dungeons of the Castle of Chillon, to see the place
where poor Bonnivard endured his dreary captivity
300 years ago. I am glad I did that, for it took
away some of the pain I was feeling on the prison-
er's account. His dungeon was a nice, cool, roomy
place, and I cannot see why he should have been so
dissatisfied with it. If he had been imprisoned in a
St. Nicholas private dwelling, where the fertilizer
prevails, and the goat sleeps with the guest, and the
chickens roost on him, and the cow comes in and
bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have
been another matter altogether; but he surely could

A Tramp Abroad 181

not have had a very cheerless time of it in that
pretty dungeon. It has romantic window-slits that
let in generous bars of light, and it has tall, noble
columns, carved apparentiy from the living rock;
and what is more, they are written all over with
thousands of names ; some of them, — like Byron's
and Victor Hugo's — of the first celebrity. Why
didn't he amuse himself reading these names?
Then there are the couriers and tourists — swarms
of them every day — what was to hinder him from
having a good time with them? I think Bonnivard's
suflFerings have been overrated.

Next, we took the train and went to Martigny, on
the way to Mont Blanc. Next morning we started,
about eight o'clock, on foot. We had plenty of
company, in the way of wagon-loads and mule-loads
of tourists — and dust. This scattering procession
of travelers was perhaps a mile long. The road was
up hill — interminably up hill, — and tolerably steep.
The weather was blistering hot, and the man or
woman who had to sit on a creeping mule, or in a
crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun, was
an object to be pitied. We could dodge among the
bushes, and have the relief of shade, but those
people could not. They paid for a conveyance, and
to get their money's worth they rode.

We went by the way of the Tfite Noir, and after
we reached high ground there was no lack of fine
scenery. In one place the road was tunneled
through a shoulder of the mountain; from there

182 A Tramp Abroad

one looked down into a gorge with a rashing i
in it, and on eveiy liand was a charming view of
rocky buttresses and wooded heights. There was a
liberal allowance of pretfy waterfalls, too, oo tlie
T6te Noir route.

About half an hour before we reached die village
of Argentic a vast dome of snow with the sun
blazing on it drifted into view and framed itself in a
strong V-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we
recognized Mont Blanc, the " monarch of the Alps.**
With every step, after that, this stately dome rose
higher and higher into the blue sky, and at last
seemed to occupy the zenith.

Some of Mont Blanc's neighbors — bare, li|^*
brown, steeple-like rocks, — were very peculiarljr
shaped. Some were whittled to a sharp point, and
slightly bent at the upper end, like a lady's finger;
one monster sugar-loaf resembled a bishop's hat; it
was too steep to hold snow on its sides, but had
some in the division.

While we were still on very high ground, and
before the descent toward Argentiire began, we
looked up toward a neighboring mountain-top, and
saw exquisite prismatic colors playing about some
white clouds which were so delicate as to almost
resemble gossamer webs. The faint pinks and
greens were peculiarly beautiful ; none of the colors
were deep, they were the lightest shades. They
were bewitchingly commingled. We sat down to
study and enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints

A rramp Abroad I83

remained during several minutes — flitting, chang-
ing, melting into each other; paling almost away
for a moment, then re-flushing, — a shifting, rest-
less, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams,
shimmering over that airy film of white cloud, and
turning it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an
angel with.

By and by we perceived what those super-delicate
colors, and their continuous play and movement, re-
minded us of; it is what one sees in a soap-bubble
that is drifting along, catching changes of tint from
the objects it passes. A soap-bubble is the most
beautiful thing, and the most exquisite, in nature;
that lovely phantom fabric in the sky was suggestive
of a soap-bubble split open, and spread out in the
sun. I wonder how much it would take to buy a
soap-bubble, if there was only one in the world?
One could buy a hatful of Koh-i-Noors with the
same money, no doubt.

We made the tramp from Martigny to Argenti^re
in eight hours. We beat all the mules and wagons ;
we didn't usually do that. We hired a sort of open
baggage-wagon for the trip down the valley to
Chamonix, and then devoted an hour to dining.
This gave the driver time to get drunk. He had a
friend with him, and this friend also had had time
to get drunk.

When we drove off, the driver said all the tourists
had arrived and gone by while we were at dinner;
•*but," said he, impressively, "be not disturbed

184 A Tramp Abroad

by that — remain tranquil — give yourselves no un*
easiness — their dust rises far before us, you shall
see it fade and disappear far behind us — rest you
tranquil, leave all to me — I am the king of drivers.
Behold !'•

Down came his whip, and away we clattered. I
never had such a shaking up in my life. The recent
flooding rains had washed the road clear away in
places, but we never stopped, we never slowed
down for anything. We tore right along> over
rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields — sometimes
with one or two wheels on the ground, but generally
with none. Every now and then that calm, good-
natured madman would bend a majestic look over
his shoulder at us and say, " Ah, you perceive? It
is as I have said — I am the king of drivers."
Every time we just missed going to destruction, he
would say, with tranquil happiness, "Enjoy it,
gentlemen, it is very rare, it is very unusual — it is
given to few to ride with the king of drivers — and
observe, it is as I have said, /am he."

He spoke in French, and punctuated with hic-
coughs. His friend was French, too, but spoke in
German — using the same system of punctuation,
however. The friend called himself the ** Captain
of Mont Blanc," and wanted us to make the ascent
with him. He said he had made more ascents than
any other man, — forty-seven, — and his brother had
made thirty-seven. His brother was the best guide
in the world, except himself — but he, yes, observe

A Tramp Abroad 185

him well,-— he was the ** Captain of Mont Blanc " —
that title belonged to none other.

The •• king" was as good as his word — he over-
took that long procession of tourists slnd went by it
like a hurricane. The result was that we got choicer
rooms at the hotel in Chamonix than we should have
done if his majesty had been a slower artist — or
rather, if he hadn't most providentially got drunk
before he left Argentiire.

CHAPTER XIV.

EVERYBODY was out of doors ; everybody was
in the principal street of the village, — not on
the sidewalks, but all over the street; everybody
was lounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, ex-
pectant, interested, — for it was train-time. That is
to say, it was diligence-time, — the half dozen big
diligences would soon be arriving from Geneva, and
the village was interested, in many ways, in knowing
how many people were coming and what sort of folk
they might be. It was altogether the livest looking
street we had seen in any village on the continent.

The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent,
whose music was loud and strong; we could not see
this torrent, for it was dark, now, but one could
locate it without a light. There was a large en-
closed yard in front of the hotel, and this was filled
with groups of villagers waiting to see the diligences
arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists for the
morrow. A telescope stood in the yard, with its
huge barrel canted up toward the lustrous evening
star. The long porch of the hotel was populous
with touristSi who sat in shawls and wraps under the

(x86)

A Tramp Abroad 187

vast overshadowing bulk of Mont Blanc, and gos-
siped or meditated.

Never did a mountain seem so close ; its big sides
seemed at one's very elbow, and its majestic dome,
and the lofty cluster of slender minarets that were its
neighbors, seemed to be almost over one's head. It
was night in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling
everywhere; the broad bases and shoulders of the
mountains were in a deep gloom, but their summits
swam in a strange rich glow which was really day-
light, and yet had a mellow something about it which
was very different from the hard white glare of the
kind of daylight I was used to. Its radiance was
strong and clear, but at the same time it was singu-
larly soft, and spiritual, and benignant. No, it was
not our harsh, aggressive, realistic daylight; it
seemed properer to an enchanted land — or to
heaven.

I had seen moonlight and daylight together before,
but I had not seen daylight and black night elbow to
elbow before. At least I had not seen the daylight
resting upon an object sufficiently close at hand, be-
fore, to make the contrast startling and at war with
nature.

The daylight passed away. Presently the moon
rose up behind some of those sky-piercing fingers or
pinnacles of bare rock 6f which I have spoken —
they were a little to the left of the crest of Mont
Blanc, and right over our heads, — but she couldn't
manage to climb high enough toward heaven to get

188 A Tramp Abroad

entirely above them. Sbe would show the glittering
arch of her upper third, occasionaUy, and scrape it
along behind the comb-like row ; sometimes a pin-
nacle stood straight up, like a statuette of ebony,
against that glittering white shield, then seemed to
glide out of it by its own volition and power, and
become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle
glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk
with the black exclamation point of its presence.
The top of one pinnacle took the shapely, clean-cut
form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiest silhouette,
while it rested against the moon. The unillumined
peaks and minarets, hovering vague and phantom-
like above us while the others were painfully white
and strong with snow and moonUght, made a
peculiar e£Fect.

But when the moon, having passed the line of
pinnacles, was hidden behind the stupendous white
swell of Mont Blanc, the masterpiece of the evening
was flung on the canvas. A rich greenish radiance
sprang into the sky from behind the mountain, and
in this some airy shreds and ribbons of vapor floated
about, and being flushed with that strange tint, went
waving to and fro like pale green flames. After a
while, radiating bars, — vast broadening fan-shaped
shadows, — grew up and stretched away to the zenith
from behind the mountain. It was a spectacle to
take one's breath, for the wonder of it, and the
sublimity.

Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and

A Tramp Abroad 189

shadow streaming up from behind that dark and pro*
digious form and occupying the half of the dull and
opaque heavens, was the most imposing and impres-
sive marvel I had ever looked upon. There is no
simile for it> for nothing is like it. If a child had
asked me what it was, I should have said, ** Humble
yourself, in this presence, it is the glory flowing from
the hidden head of the Creator." One falls shorter
of the truth than that, sometimes, in trying to ex-
plain mysteries to the little people. I could have
found out the cause of this awe-compelling miracle
by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at Mont Blanc,
— but I did not wish to know. We have not the
reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has,
because we know how it is made. We have lost as
much as we gained by prying into that matter.

We took a walk down street, a block or two, and
at a place where four streets met and the principal
shops were clustered, found the groups of men in
the roadway thicker than ever — for this was the
Exchange of Chamonix. These men were in the
costumes of guides and porters, and were there to
be hired.

The office of that great personage, the Guide-in-
Chief of the Chamonix Guild of Guides, was near
by. This guild is a close corporation, and is gov-
erned by strict laws. There are many excursion
routes, some dangerous and some not, some that can
be made safely without a guide, and some that can-
not. The bureau determines these things. Where

190 A Tramp Abroad

it decides that a guide is necessary, you are forbid-
den to go without one. Neither are you allowed to
be a victim of extortion : the law states what you
are to pay. The guides serve in rotation ; you can-
not select the man who is to take your life into his
hands; you must take the worst in the lot> if it is
his turn. A guide's fee ranges all the way up from
a half dollar (for some trifling excursion of a few
rods) to twenty dollars, according to the distance
traversed and the nature of the ground. A guide's
fee for taking a person to the summit of Mont Blanc
and back, is twenty dollars — and he earns it. The
time employed is usually three days, and there is
enough early rising in it to make a man far more
** healthy and wealthy and wise " than any one man
has any right to be. The porter's fee for the same
trip is ten dollars. Several fools, — no, I mean sev-
eral tourists, — usually go together, and divide up the
expense, and thus make it light; for if only one f —
tourist, I mean — went, he would have to have
several guides and porters, and that would make the
matter costly.

We went into the Chief's office. There were maps
of mountains on the walls; also one or two litho-
graphs of celebrated guides, and a portrait of the
scientist De Saussure.

In glass cases were some labeled fragments of
boots and batons, and other suggestive relics and
remembrancers of casualties on Mont Blanc. In a
book was a record of all the ascents which have ever

A Tramp Abroad 191

been made, beginning with Nos. i and 2, — being
those of Jacques Balmat and De Saussure, in 1787,
and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet.
In fact No. 685 was standing by the official table
waiting to receive the precious official diploma which
should prove to his German household and to his
descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough
to climb to the top of Mont Blanc. He looked very
happy when he got his document; in fact, he spoke
up and said he was happy.

I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at
home who had never traveled, and whose desire all
his life has been to ascend Mont Blanc, but the
Guide-in-Chief rather insolently refused to sell me
one. I was very much offended. I said I did not
propose to be discriminated against on account of
my nationality ; that he had just sold a diploma to
this German gentleman, and my money was as good
as his; I would see to it that he couldn't keep shop
for Germans and deny his produce to Americans ; I
would have his license taken away from him at the
dropping of a handkerchief; if France refused to
break him, I would make an international matter of
it and bring on a war; the soil should be drenched
with blood ; and not only that, but I would set up
an opposition shop and sell diplomas at half price.

For two cents I would have done these things,
too ; but nobody offered me the two cents. I tried
to move that German's feelings, but it could not be
done; he would not give me his diploma, neither

192 A Tramp Abroad

would he sell it to me. I told him my friend was
sick and could not come himself, but he said he did
not care a verdammtes pfennig, he wanted his
diploma for himself — did I suppose he was going
to risk his neck for that thing and then give it to a
sick stranger? Indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't.
I resolved, then, that I would do all I could to
injure Mont Blanc.

In the record book was a list of all the fatal
accidents which had happened on the mountain. It
began with the one in 1820 when the Russian Dr.
Hamel's three guides were lost in a crevasse of the
glacier, and it recorded the delivery of the remains
in the valley by the slow-moving glacier 41 years
later. The latest catastrophe bore date 1877.

We stepped out and roved about the village a
while. In front of the little church was a monument
to the memory of the bold guide Jacques Balmat,
the first man who ever stood upon the summit of
Mont Blanc. He made that wild trip solitary and
alone. He accomplished the ascent a number of
times afterward. A stretch of nearly half a century
lay between his first ascent and his last one. At the
ripe old age of 72 he was climbing around a corner
of a lofty precipice of the Pic du Midi — nobody
with him — when he slipped and fell. So he died
in the harness.

He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and
used to go off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and
impossible gold among those perilous peaks and

A Tramp Abroad 193

precipices. He was on a quest of that kind when he
lost his life. There was a statue to him, and another
to De Saussure, in the hall of our hotel, and a metal
plate on the door of a room up stairs bore an inscrip-
tion to the effect that that room had been occupied
by Albert Smith. Balmat and De Saussure discov-
ered Mont Blanc — so to speak — but it was Smith
who made it a paying property. His articles in
Blackwood and his lectures on Mont Blanc in
London advertised it and made people as anxious to
see it as if it owed them money.

As we strolled along the road we looked up and
saw a red signal light glowing in the darkness of the
mountain side. It seemed but a trifling way up,— •
perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes.
It was a lucky piece of sagacity in us that we con-
cluded to stop a man whom we met and get a light
for our pipes from him instead of continuing the
climb to that lantern to get a light, as had been our
purpose. The man said that that lantern was on
the Grands Mulets, some 6,500 feet above the valley !
I know by our Riffelberg experience, that it would
have taken us a good part of a week to go up there.
I would sooner not smoke at all, than take all that
trouble for a light.

Even in the daytime the foreshortening effect of
this mountain's close proximity creates curious decep-
tions. For instance, one sees with the naked eye a
cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above
and beyond he sees the spot where that red light was
18««

194 A Tramp Abroad

located ; he thinks he could throw a stone from the
one place to the other. But he couldn't, for the
difference between the two altitudes is more than
3;000 feet. It looks impossible, from below, that
this can be true, but it is true, nevertheless.

While strolling about, we kept the run of the
moon all the time, and we still kept an eye on her
after we got back to the hotel portico. I had a
theory that the gravitation of refraction, being sub-
sidiary to atmospheric compensation, the refrangi-
bility of the earth's surface would emphasize this
effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur,
and possibly so even-handedly impact the odic and
idyllic forces together, the one upon the other, as to
prevent the moon from rising higher than 12,200 feet
above sea level. This daring theory had been re-
ceived with frantic scorn by some of my fellow-
scientists, and with an eager silence by others.

Among the former I may mention Prof. H y;

and among the latter Prof. T ^1. Such is pro-
fessional jealousy; a scientist will never show any
kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.
There is no feeling of brotherhood among these
people. Indeed, they always resent it when I call
them brother. To show how far their ungenerosity
can carry them, I will state that I offered to let Prof.
H y publish my great theory as his own dis-
covery; I even begged him to do it; I even pro-
posed to print it myself as his theory. Instead of
thanking me, he said that if I tried to fasten that

A Tramp Abroad 195

theory on him he would sue me for slander. I was
going to offer it to Mr. Darwin, whom I understood
to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to
me that perhaps he would not be interested in it
since it did not concern heraldry.

But I am glad, now, that I was forced to father
my intrepid theory myself, for, on the night of which
I am writing, it was triumphantly justified and estab-
lished. Mont Blanc is nearly 1 6,000 feet high; he
hid the moon utterly ; near him is a peak which is
12,216 feet high ; the moon slid along behind the pin-
nacles, and when she approached that one I watched
her with intense interest, for my reputation as a
scientist must stand or fall by its decision. I cannot
describe the emotions which surged like tidal waves
through my breast when I saw the moon glide be-
hind that lofty needle and pass it by without expos-
ing more than two feet four inches of her upper
rim above it! I was secure, then. I knew she
could rise no higher, and I was right. She sailed
behind all the peaks and never succeeded in hoisting
her disk above a single one of them.

While the moon was behind one of those sharp
fingers, its shadow was flung athwart the vacant
heavens — a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark ray —
with a streaming and energetic suggestion oi force
about it, such as the ascending jet of water from a
powerful fire engine affords. It was curious to see a
good strong shadow of an earthly object cast upon
so intangible a field as the atmosphere.

196 A Tramp Abroad

We went to bed, at last, and went quickly to
sleep, but I woke up, after about three hours, with
throbbing temples, and a head which was phjrsically
sore, outside and in. I was dazed, dreamy,
wretched, seedy, unrefreshed. I recognized the
occasion of all this: it was that torrent. In the
mountsdn villages of Switzerland, and along the
roads, one has always the roar of the torrent in his
ears. He imagines it is music, and he thinks poetic
things about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and
is lulled to sleep by it. But by and by he begins to
notice that his head is very sore — he cannot account
for it; in solitudes where the profoundest silence
reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar
in his ears, which is like what he would experience
if he had sea shells pressed against them — he cannot
account for it; he is drowsy and absent-minded;
there is no tenacity to his mind, he cannot keep
hold of a thought and follow it out; if he sits down
to write, his vocabulary is empty, no suitable words
will come, he forgets what he started to do, and
remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes
closed, listening painfully to the muffled roar of a
distant train in his ears; in his soundest sleep the
strain continues, he goes on listening, always listening
intently, anxiously, and wakes at last, harassed, irri-
table, unrefreshed. He cannot manage to account
for these things. Day after day he feels as if he had
spent his nights in a sleeping car. It actually takes
him weeks to find out that it is those persecuting

A Tramp Abroad 197

torrents that have been making all the mischief. It
is time for him to get out of Switzerland, then, for
as soon as he has discovered the cause, the misery
is magnified several fold. The roar of the torrent is
maddening, then, for his imagination is assisting;
the physical pain it inflicts is exquisite. When he
finds he is approaching one of those streams, his
dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track
and avoid the implacable foe.

Eight or nine months after tlie distress of the
torrents had departed from me, the roar and thunder
of the streets of Paris brought it all back again. I
moved to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for
peace. About midnight the noises dulled away, and
I was sinking to sleep, when I heard a new and
curious sound; I listened: evidently some joyous
lunatic was softly dancing a ** double shuffle" in
the room over my head. I had to wait for him to
get through, of course. Five long, long minutes
he smoothly shuffled away — a pause followed, then
something fell with a heavy thump on the floor. I
said to myself ** There — he is pulling off his boots

— thank heavens he is done.'* Another slight pause

— he went to shuffling again ! I said to myself, *• Is
he trying to see what he can do with only one boot
on?" Presently came another pause and another
thump on the floor. I said " Good, he has pulled
off his other boot — now he is done." But he
wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again.
I said, '' Confound him, he is at it in his slippers ! "

198 A Tramp Abroad

After a little came that same old pause, and right
after it that thump on the floor once more. I said,
" Hang him, he had on two pair of boots ! " For an
hour Uiat magician went on shuffling and pulling oS
boots till he had shed as many as twenty-five pair, and
I was hovering on the verge of lunacy. I got my
gun and stole up there. The fellow was in the midst
of an acre of sprawling boots, and he had a boot in
his hand, shuffling it — no I mean polishing it. The
mystery was explained. He hadn't been dancing.
He was the '' Boots " of the hotel, and was attend-
ing to business.

CHAPTER XV.

AFTER breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix,
we went out in the yard and watched the gangs
of excursionizing tourists arriving and departing with
their mules and guides and porters ; then we took a
look through the telescope at the snowy hump of
Mont Blanc. It was brilliant with sunshine, and the
vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yards
away. With the naked eye we could dimly make
out the house at the Pierre Pointue, which is located
by the side of the great glacier, and is more than
3,000 feet above the level of the valley; but with
the telescope we could see all its details. While I
looked, a woman rode by the house on a mule, and
I saw her with sharp distinctness ; I could have de-
scribed her dress. I saw her nod to the people of
the house, and rein up her mule, and put her hand
up to shield her eyes from the sun. I was not used
to telescopes ; in fact, I had never looked through a
good one before; it seemed incredible to me that
this woman could be so far away. I was satisfied
that I could see all these details with my naked eye ;
but when I tried it, that mule and those vivid people

200 A Tramp Abroad

had wholly vanished, and the house itself was be-
come small and vague. I tried the telescope again,
and again everything was vivid. The strong black
shadows of the mule and the woman were flung
against the side of the house, and I saw the mule's
silhouette wave its ears.

The telescopulisty — or the telescopulariat, — I do
not know which is right, — said a party were making
a grand ascent, and would come in sight on the re-
mote upper heights, presently; so we waited to ob-
serve this performance.

Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand
with a party on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely
to be able to say I had done it, and I believed the
telescope could set me within seven feet of the
uppermost man. The telescoper assured me that it
could. I then asked him how much I owed him for
as far as I had got? He said, one franc. I asked
him how much it would cost me to make the entire
ascent? Three francs. I at once determined to
make the entire ascent. But first I inquired if there
was any danger? He said no, — not by telescope;
said he had taken a great many parties to the sum-
mit, and never lost a man. I asked what he would
charge to let my agent go with me, together with
such guides and porters as might be necessary? He
said he would let Harris go for two francs ; and that
unless we were unusually timid, he should consider
guides and porters unnecessary ; it was not customary
to take them, when going by telescope, for they were

A Tramp Abroad 201

rather an incotnbrance than a help. He said that
the party now on the mountain were approaching
the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should
overtake them within ten minutes, and could then
join them and have the benefit of their guides and
porters without their knowledge, and without ex-
pense to us.

I then said we would start immediately. I believe
I said it calmly, though I was conscious of a shudder
and of a paling cheek, in view of the nature of the
exploit I was so unreflectingly engaging in. But the
old dare-devil spirit was upon me, and I said that as
I had committed myself I would not back down ; I
would ascend Mont Blanc if it cost me my life. I
told the man to slant his machine in the proper
direction and let us be off.

Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I
heartened him up and said I would hold his hand
all the way; so he gave his consent, though he
trembled a little at first. I took a last pathetic look
upon the pleasant summer scene about me, then
boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared to
mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting
snows.

We took our way carefully and cautiously across
the great Glacier des Bossons, over yawning and
terrific crevasses and amongst imposing crags and
buttresses of ice which were fringed with icicles of
gigantic proportions. The desert of ice that
stretched far and wide about us was wild and

2Q2 A Tramp Abroad

desolate beyond description, and the perils which
beset us were so great that at times I was minded to
turn back. But I pulled my pluck together and
pushed on.

We passed the glacier safely and began to mount
the steeps beyond, with great celerity. When we
were seven minutes out from the starting point, we
reached an altitude where the scene took a new
aspect; an apparentiy limitiess continent of gleam-
ing snow was tilted heavenward before our faces.
As my eye followed that awful acclivity far away up
into the remote sides, it seemed to me that all I had
ever seen before of sublimity and magnitude was
small and insignificant compared to this.

We rested a moment, and then began to mount
with speed. Within three minutes we caught sight
of the party ahead of us, and stopped to observe
diem. They were toiling up a long, slanting ridge
of snow — twelve persons, roped together some
fifteen feet apart, marching in single file, and strongly
marked against the clear blue sky. One was a
woman. We could see them lift their feet and put
diem down; we saw them swing their alpenstocks
forward in unison, like so many pendulums, and
then bear their weight upon them ; we saw the lady
wave her handkerchief. They dragged themselves
upward in a worn and weary way, for they had been
climbing steadily from the Grands Mulets, on the
Glacier des Bossons, since three in the morning, and
it was eleven, now. We saw them sink down in the

A Tramp Abroad 203

snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle.
After a while they moved on, and as they approached
the final short dash of the home-stretch we closed up
on them and joined them.

Presently we all stood together on the summit!
What a view was spread out below ! Away off under
the northwestern horizon rolled the silent billows of
the Farnese Oberland, their snowy crests glinting
softly in the subdued lights of distance ; in the north
rose the jgiant form of the Wobblehorn, draped from
peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; beyond
him, to the right, stretched the grand processional
summits of the Cisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a
sensuous haze; to the east loomed the colossal
masses of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddlehorn, and the
Dinnerhom, their cloudless summits flashing white
and cold in the sun ; beyond them shimmered the
faint far line of the Ghauts of Jubbelpore and the
Aiguilles des Alleghenies ; in the south towered the
smoking peak of Fopocatapetl and the unapproach-
able altitudes of the peerless Scrabblehorn ; in the
west-southwest the stately range of the Himalayas
lay dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all
around the curving horizon the eye roved over a .
troubled sea of sun-kissed Alps, and noted, here and
there, the noble proportions and soaring domes of
the Bottlehorn, and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovel-
horn, and the Powderhom, all bathed in the glory of
noon and mottled with softly-gliding blots, the
shadows flung from drifting clouds.

204 A Tramp Abroad

Overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant,
tremendous shout, in unison. A startled man at my
elbow said :

•• Confound you, what do you yell like that for,
right here in the street? "

That brought me down to Chamonix, like a flirt.
I gave that man some spiritual advice and disposed
of him, and then paid the telescope man his full fee,
and said that we were charmed with the trip and
would remain down, and not re-ascend and require
him to fetch us down by telescope. This pleased
him very much, for of course we could have stepped
back to the summit and put him to the trouble of
bringing us home if we had wanted to.

I judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so
we went after them, but the Chief Guide put us ofiF,
with one pretext or another, during all the time we
staid in Chamonix, and we ended by never getting
them at all. So much for his prejudice against peo-
ple's nationality. However, we worried him enough
to make him remember us and our ascent for some
time. He even said, once, that he wished there was
a lunatic asylum in Chamonix. This shows that he
really had fears that we were going to drive him
mad. It was what we intended to do, but lack of
time defeated it.

I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or
the other, as to ascending Mont Blanc. I say only
this: if he is at .all timid, the enjoyments of the trip
will hardly make up for the hardships and sufferings

A Tramp Abroad 205

he will have to endure. But if he has good nerve,
youth, health, and a bold, firm will, and could leave
his family comfortably provided for in case the worst
happened, he would find the ascent a wonderful ex-«
perience, and the view from the top a vision to dream
about, and tell about, and recall with exultation all
the days of his life.

While I do not advise such a person to attempt the
ascent, I do not advise him against it. But if he
elects to attempt it, let him be warily careful of two
things : choose a calm, clear day ; and do not pay the
telescope man in advance. There are dark stories
of his getting advance payers on the summit and
then leaving them there to rot.

A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through
the Chamonix telescopes. Think of questions and
answers like these, on an inquest :

Coroner. You saw deceased lose his life?

Witness. I did.

C. Where was he, at the time?

W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc.

C. Where were you ?

W. In the main street of Chamonix.

C. What was the distance between you?

W. A little over five miles ^ as the bird flies.

This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month
after the disaster on the Matterhorn. Three adven-
turous English gentlemen,* of great experience in
mountain climbing, made up their minds to ascend

* Sii George Young and his brothers James and Albert.

206 A Tramp Abroad

Mont Blanc without guides or porters. All en*
deavors to dissuade them from their project failed.
Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix.
These huge brass tubes, mounted on their scaffold-
ings and pointing skyward from every choice vantage-
ground, have the formidable look of artillery, and
give the town the general aspect of getting ready to
repd a charge of angels. The reader may easily
believe that the telescopes had plenty of custom on
that August morning in 1866, for everybody knew
of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot,
and all had fears that misfortune would result. All
the morning the tubes remained directed toward the
mountain heights, each with its anxious group
around it; but the white deserts were vacant.

At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who
were looking through the telescopes cried out
"There they are! " — and sure enough, far up, on
the loftiest terraces of the Grand Plateau, the three
pygmies appeared, climbing with remarkable vigor
and spirit. They disappeared in the •'Corridor,"
and were lost to sight during an hour. Then they
reappeared, and were presently seen standing together
upon the extreme summit of Mont Blanc. So far,
all was well. They remained a few minutes on that
highest point of land in Europe, a target for all the
telescopes, and were then seen to begin the descent.
Suddenly all three vanished. An instant after, they
appeared again, two thousand feet below I

Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down

A Tramp Abroad 207

an almost perpendicular slope of ice to a point where
it joined the border of the upper glacier. Naturally,
the distant witnesses supposed they were now looking
upon three corpses; so they could hardly believe
their eyes when they presently saw two of the men
rise to their feet and bend over the third. During
two hours and a half they watched the two busying
themselves over the extended form of their brother,
who seemed entirely inert. Chamonix's affairs
stood still ; everybody was in the street, all interest
was centered upon what was going on upon that
lofty and isolated stage five miles away. Finally the
two, — one of them walking with great difficulty, —
were seen to begin the descent, abandoning the third,
who was no doubt lifeless. Their movements were
followed, step by step, until they reached the
*• Corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge. Be-
fore they had had time to traverse the ** Corridor"
and reappear, twilight was come, and the power of
the telescope was at an end.

The survivors had a most perilous journey before
them in the gathering darkness, for they must get
down to the Grands Mulets before they would find a
safe stopping place — a long and tedious descent,
and perilous enough even in good daylight. The
oldest guides expressed the opinion that they could
not succeed; that all the chances were that they
would lose their lives.

Yet those brave men did succeed. They reached
the Grands Mulets in safety. Even the fearful shock

208 A Tramp Abroad

which their nerves had sustained was not sufficient
to overcome their coolness and courage. It would
appear from the official account that they were
threading their way down through those dangers
from the closing in of twilight until 2 o'clock in the
morning, or later, because the rescuing party from
Chamonix reached the Grands Mulets about 3 in the
morning and moved thence toward the scene of the
disaster under the leadership of Sir George Young,
•• who had only just arrived."

After having been on his feet twenty-four hours,
in the exhausting work of mountain climbing, Sir
George began the re-ascent at the head of the relirf
party of six guides, to recover the corpse of his
brother. This was considered a new imprudence,
as the number was too few for the service required.
Another relief party presently arrived at the cabin
on the Grands Mulets and quartered themselves
there to await events. Ten hours after Sir George's
departure toward the summit, this new relief were still
scanning the snowy altitudes above them from their
own high perch among the ice deserts 10,000 feet
above the level of the sea, but the whole forenoon
had passed without a glimpse of any living thing
appearing up there.

This was alarming. Half a dozen of their number
set out, then early in the afternoon, to seek and succor
Sir George and his guides. The persons remaining
at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued
another distressing wait. Four hours passed, with-

A Tramp Abroad 209

out tidings. Then at 5 o'clock another relief, con-
sisting of three guides, set forward from the cabin.
They carried food and cordials for the refreshment
of their predecessors ; they took lanterns with them,
too; night was coming on, and to make matters
worse, a fine, cold rain had begun to fall.

At the same hour that these three began their
dangerous ascent, the official Guide-in-Chief of the
Mont Blanc region undertook the dangerous descent
to Chamonix, all alone, to get reinforcements.
However, a couple of hours later, at 7 P. M., the
anxious solicitude came to an end, and happily, A
bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks
was distinguishable against the snows of the upper
heights. The watchers counted these specks eagerly
— 14, — nobody was missing. An hour and a half
later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin.
They had brought the corpse with them. Sir
George Young tarried there but a few minutes, and
then began the long and troublesome descent from
the cabin to Chamonix. He probably reached there
about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, after having
been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during two
days and two nights. His endurance was equal to
his daring.

The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George
and the relief parties among the heights where the
disaster had happened was a thick fog — or, partly
that and partly the slow and difficult work of convey-
ing the dead body down the perilous steeps.

210 A Tramp Abroad

The corpse^ upon being viewed at the inquest,
showed no bruises, and it was some time before the
surgeons discovered that the neck was broken. One
of the surviving brothers had sustained some unim-
portant injuries, but the other had suffered no hurt
at all. How these men could fall 2,000 feet, almost
perpendicularly, and live afterward, is a most strange
and unaccountable thing.

A great many women have made the ascent of
Mont Blanc. An English girl. Miss Stratton, con-
ceived the daring idea, two or three years ago, of
attempting the ascent in the middle of winter. She
tried it — and she succeeded. Moreover, she froze
two of her fingers on the way up, she fell in love
with her guide on the summit, and she married him
when she got to the bottom again. There is noth-
ing in romance, in the way of a striking " situation,**
which can beat this love scene in mid-heaven on an
isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero and
an Arctic gale blowing.

The first woman who ascended Mont Blanc was a
girl aged 22 — Mile. Maria Paradis — 1809. No-
body was with her but her sweetheart, and he was
not a guide. The sex then took a rest for about 30
years, when a Mile. d'Angeville made the ascent —
1838. In Chamonix I picked up a rude old litho-
graph of that day which pictured her ** in the act."

However, I value it less as a work of art than as
a fashion plate. Miss d'Angeville put on a pair of
men's pantaloons to climb in, which was wise; but

A Tramp Abroad 211

5t she cramped their utility by adding her petticoat,
(^ which was idiotic.

0^; One of the mournfulest calamities which men's

,j. disposition to climb dangerous mountains has re-
^; suited in, happened on Mont Blanc in September,

1870, M. D'Arve tells the story briefly in his
^ " Histoire du Mont Blanc." In the next chapter

I will copy its chief features.

CHAPTER XVI.

A CATASTROPHE WHICH COST ELEVEN LIVES

ON the Sth of September, 1870, a caravan of
eleven persons departed from Chamonix to
make the ascent of Mont Blanc. Three of the party
were tourists: Messrs. Randall and Bean, Ameri-
cans, and Mr. George Corkindale, a Scotch gentle-
man ; there were three guides and five porters. The
cabin on the Grands Mulcts was reached that day ;
the ascent was resumed early the next morning,
September 6. The day was fine and clear, and the
movements of the party were observed through the
telescopes of Chamonix; at two o'clock in the after-
noon they were seen to reach the summit. A few
minutes later they were seen making the first steps
of the descent; then a cloud closed around them
and hid them from view.

Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night
came, no one had returned to the Grands Mulcts.
Sylvain Couttet, keeper of the cabin there, suspected
a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help.
A detachment of guides went up, but by the time
they had made the tedious trip and reached the

(8M\

A Tramp Abroad 213

cabin, a raging storm had set in. They had to
wait; nodiing could be attempted in such a tempest.

The wild storm lasted more than a week, without
ceasing; but on the 17th, Couttet, with several
guides, left the cabin and succeeded in making the
ascent. In the snowy wastes near the summit they
came upon five bodies, lying upon their sides in a
reposeful attitude which suggested that possibly they
had fallen asleep there, while exhausted with fatigue
and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never
knew when death stole upon them. Couttet moved
a few steps further and discovered five more bodies.
The eleventh corpse, — that of a porter, — was not
found, although diligent search was made for it.

In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans,
was found a note-book in which had been penciled
some sentences which admit us, in flesh and spirit,
as it were, to the presence of these men during their
last hours of life, and to the grisly horrors which
their fading vision looked upon and their failing
consciousness took cognizance of :

Tuesday, Sept. 6, I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc, with ten
persons — eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale and Mr. Randall. We
reached the summit at hall past 2. Immediately after quitting it, we
were enveloped in clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto
hollowed in the snow, which afforded but poor shelter, and I was ill all
night.

Sept 7 — Morning. The cold is excessive. The snow falls heavily
and without interruption. The guides take no rest.

Evening. My Dear Hessie, we have been two days on Mont
Blanc, in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow, we have lost our
way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow, at an altitude of 15,000
feeL I have no longer any hope of descending.

214 A Tiamp Abroad

They had wandered around, and around, in that
blinding snow storm, hopelessly lost, in a space
only a hundred yards square; and when cold and
fatigue vanquished them at last, they scooped
their cave and lay down there to die by inches,
unaware thai five steps more would have brought
them into the true path. They were so near to life
and safety as that, and did not suspect it. The
thought of this gives the sharpest pang that the
tragic story conveys.

The author of the •'Histoire du Mont Blanc ''
introduces the closing sentences of Mr. Bean's
pathetic record thus :

'* Here the characters are large and unsteady; the

hand which traces them is become chilled and torpid ;

but the spirit survives, and the faith and resignation

of the dying man are expressed with a sublime

simplicity."

Perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to jron. We have
nothmg to eat, my feet are ahreadj frozen, and I am exhausted; I have
strength to write only a few words more. I have left means for C's
education; I know you will employ them wisely. I die with faith in
God, and with loving thoughts of you. Farewell to all. We shall
meet again, in Heaven. ... I think of you always.

It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their
victims with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule
failed. These men suffered the bitterest death that
has been recorded in the history of those mountains,
freighted as that history is with grisly tragedies.

CHAPTER XVII.

MR. HARRIS and I took some guides and porters
and ascended to the H6tel des Pyramides,
which is perched on the high moraine which borders
the Glacier des Bossons. The road led sharply up
hill, all the way, through grass and flowers and
woods, and was a pleasant walk, barring the fatigue
of the climb.

From the hotel we could view the huge glacier at
very close range. After a rest we followed down a
path which had been made in the steep inner
frontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the
glacier itself. One of the shows of the place was a
tunnel-like cavern, which had been hewn in the
glacier. The proprietor of this tunnel took candles
and conducted us into it. It was three or four feet
wide and about six feet high. Its walls of pure and
solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light that pro-
duced a lovely effect, and suggested enchanted
caves, and that sort of thing. When we had pro-
ceeded some yards and were entering darkness, we
turned about and had a dainty sunlit picture of
distant woods and heights framed in the strong arch
T (ax5)

216 A Tramp Abroad

of the tunnel and seen through the tender blue radi-
ance of the tunnel's atmosphere.

The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and
when we reached its inner limit the proprietor
stepped into a branch tunnel with his candles and
left us buried in the bowels of the glacier, and in
pitch darkness. We judged his purpose was murder
and robbery; so we got out our matches and pre-
pared to sell our lives as dearly as possible by setting
the glacier on fire if the worst came to the worst —
but we soon perceived that this man had changed
his mind; he began to sing, in a deep, melodious
voice, and woke some curious and pleasing echoes.
By and by he came back and pretended that that
was what he had gone behind there for. We be-
lieved as much of that as we wanted to.

Thus our lives had been once more in imminent
peril, but by the exercise of the swift sagacity and
cool courage which had saved us so often, we had
added another escape to the long list. The tourist
should visit that ice-cavern, by all means, for it is
well worth the trouble ; but I would advise him to
go only with a strong and well-armed force. I do
not consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be
unadvisable to take it along, if convenient. The
journey, going and coming, is about three miles and
a half, three of which are on level ground. We
made it in less than a day, but I would counsel the
unpracticed, — if not pressed for time, — to allow
themselves two. Nothing is gained in the Alps by

A Tramp Abroad 217

over-^xertion ; nothing is gained by crowding two
days' work into one for the poor sake of being able
to boast of the exploit afterward. It will be found
much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two
days, and then subtract one of them from the
narrative. This saves fatigue, and does not injure
the narrative. All the more thoughtful among the
Alpine tourists do this.

We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and
asked for a squadron of guides and porters for the
ascent of the Montanvert. This idiot glared at us,
and said :

" You don't need guides and porters to go to the
Montanvert."

•• What do we need, then?"

** Such zsyou t — an ambulance 1"

I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took
my custom elsewhere.

Betimes, next morning, we had reached an alti-
tude of 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. Here
we camped and breakfasted. There was a cabin
there — the spot is called the Caillet — and a spring
of ice-cold water. On the door of the cabin was a
sign, in French, to the effect that ** One may here
see a living chamois for fifty centimes." We did
not invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one.

A little after noon we ended the ascent and
arrived at the new hotel on the Montanvert, and
had a view of six miles, right up the great glacier,
the famous Mer de Glace. At this point it is like a

218 A Tramp Abroad

sea whose deep swales and long, rolling swells have
been caught in mid-movement and frozen solid ; but
further up it is broken up into wildly-tossing billows
of ice.

We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of
the moraine, and invaded the glacier. There were
tourists of both sexes scattered far and wide over it,
everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating
rink.

The Empress Josephine came this far, once. She
ascended the Montanvert in 1810 — but not alone;
a small army of men preceded her to clear the
path — and carpet it, perhaps, — and she followed,
under the protection of sixty-eight guides.

Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far
different style. It was seven weeks after the first
fall of the Empire, and poor Marie Louise, ex-
Empress, was a fugitive. She came at night, and in
a storm, with only two attendants, and stood before
a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled, soaked with
rain, •* the red print of her lost crown still girdling
her brow," and implored admittance — and was
refused! A few days before, the adulations and
applauses of a nation were sounding in her ears, and
now she was come to this !

We crossed the Mer de Glace in safety, but we
had misgivings. The crevasses in the ice yawned
deep and blue and mysterious, and it made one
nervous to traverse them. The huge round waves
of ice were slippery and difficult to climb, and the

A Tramp Abroad 219

chances of tripping and sliding down them and
darting into a crevasse were too many to be com-
fortable.

In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the
biggest of the ice-waves, we found a fraud who pre-
tended to be cutting steps to insure the safety of
tourists. He was •* soldiering " when we came upon
him, but he hopped up and chipped out a couple of
steps about big enough for a cat, and charged us a
franc or two for it. Then he sat down again, to
doze till the next party should come along. He
had collected blackmail from two or three hundred
people already, that day, but had not chipped out
ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly. I
have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it
seems to me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is
the softest one I have encountered yet.

That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a
persistent and persecuting thirst with it. What an
unspeakable luxury it was to slake that thirst with
the pure and limpid ice-water of the glacier ! Down
the sides of every great rib of ice poured limpid rills
in gutters carved by their own attrition; better still,
wherever a rock had lain, there was now a bowl-
shaped hole, with smooth white sides and bottom of
ice, and this bowl was brimming with water of such
absolute clearness that the careless observer would
not see it at all, but would think the bowl was
empty. These fountains had such an alluring look
that I often stretched myself out when I was not

220 A Tramp Abroad

thirsty and dipped my face in and drank till my
teeth ached. Everywhere among the Swiss moun-
tains we had at hand the blessing — not to be found
in Europe except in the mountains — of water capa-
ble of quenching thirst. Everywhere in the Swiss
highlands brilliant little rills of exquisitely cold water
went dancing along by the roadsides, and my com-
rade and I were always drinking and always deliver-
ing our deep gratitude.

But in Europe everywhere except in the moun-
tains, the water is flat and insipid beyond the power
of words to describe. It is served lukewarm; but
no matter, ice could not help it ; it is incurably fiat,
incurably insipid. It is only good to wash with; I
wonder it doesn't occur to the average inhabitant to
try it for that. In Europe the people say con-
temptuously, '* Nobody drinks water here." In-
deed, they have a sound and sufficient reason. In
many places they even have what may be called
prohibitory reasons. In Paris and Munich, for in-
stance, they say, •' Don't drink the water, it is
simply poison."

Either America is healthier than Europe, notwith-
standing her "deadly" indulgence in ice-water, or
she does not keep the run of her death rate as
sharply as Europe does. I think we do keep up the
death statistics accurately ; and if we do, our cities
are healthier than the cities of Europe. Every
month the German government tabulates the death
rate of the world and publishes it. I scrap-booked

A Tramp Abroad 221

these reports during several months, and it was
curious to see how regular and persistently each city
repeated its same death rate month after month.
The tables might as well have been stereotyped,
they varied so little. These tables were based upon
weekly reports showing the average of deaths in
each 1 ,000 of population for a year. Munich was
always present with her 33 deaths in each 1,000 of
her population (yearly average), Chicago was as
constant with her 15 or 17, Dublin with her 48 —
and so on.

Only a few American cities appear in these tables,
but they are scattered so widely over the country
that they furnish a good general average of city health
in the United States ; and I think it will be granted
that our towns and villages are healthier than our
cities.

Here is the average of the only American cities
reported in the German tables :

Chicago, deaths in 1,000 of population annually,
16; Philadelphia, 18; St. Louis, 18; San Fran-
cisco, 19; New York (the Dublin of America), 23.

See how the figures jump up, as soon as one
arrives at the transatlantic list:

Paris, 27; Glasgow, 27; London, 28; Vienna,
28; Augsburg, 28; Braunschweig, 28; Konigs-
berg, 29; Cologne, 29; Dresden, 29; Hamburg,
29 ; Berlin, 30 ; Bombay, 30 ; Warsaw, 3 1 ; Bres-
lau, 31; Odessa, 32; Munich, 33; Strasburg, 33;
Pesth, 35; Cassel, 35; Lisbon, 36; Liverpool, 36;

222 A Tramp Abroad

Pr^^e, 37 ; Madras^ 37 ; Bucharest, 39 ; St. Peters-
burg, 40; Trieste, 40; Alexandria (Egypt), 43;
Dublin, 48; Calcutta, 55.

Edinbui^h is as healthy as New York — 23 ; but
there is no city in the entire list which is healthier,
except Frankf ort-on-the-Main — 20. But Frankfort
is not as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St.
Louis, or Philadelphia.

Perhaps a strict average of the world might de-
velop the fact that where i in 1,000 of America's
population dies, 2 in i ,000 of the other populations
of the earth succumb.

I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think
the above statistics darkly suggest that these people
over here drink this detestable water ** on the sly."

We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of
the glacier, and then crept along its sharp ridge a
hundred yards or so, in pretty constant danger of a
tumble to the glacier below. The fall would have
been only 100 feet, but it would have closed me out
as effectually as 1,000, therefore I respected the
distance accordingly, and was glad when the trip
was done. A moraine is an ugly thing to assault
head-first. At a distance it looks like an endless
grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely
smoothed; but close by, it is found to be made
mainly of rough bowlders of all sizes, from that of
a man's head to that of a cottage.

By and by we came to the Mauvais Pas^ or the
Villainous Road, to translate it feelingly. It was a

A Tramp Abroad 223

breakneck path around the face of a precipice forty
or fifty feet high, and nothing to hang on to but
some iron railings. I got along, slowly, safely, and
uncomfortably, and finally reached the middle. My
hopes began to rise a little, but they were quickly
blighted; for there I met a hog — a long-nosed,
bristly fellow, that held up his snout and worked his
nostrils at me inquiringly. A hog on a pleasure
excursion in Switzerland — think of it. It is striking
and unusual ; a body might write a poem about it.
He could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do
it. It would have been foolish to stand upon our
dignity in a place where there was hardly room to
stand upon our feet, so we did nothing of the sort.
There were twenty or thirty ladies and gentlemen
behind us ; we all turned about and went back, and
the hog followed behind. The creature did not
seem set up by what he had done ; he had probably
done it before.

We reached the restaurant on the height called
the Chapeau at four in the afternoon. It was a
memento-factory, and the stock was large, cheap,
and varied. I bought the usual paper-cutter to re-
member the place by, and had Mont Blanc, the
Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region branded on
my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley
and walked home without being tied together. This
was not dangerous, for the valley was five miles
wide, and quite level.

We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next

224 A Tramp Abroad

morning we left for Geneva on top of the diligence,
under shelter of a gay awning. If I remember
rightly, there were more than twenty people up
there. It was so high that the ascent was made by
ladder. The huge vehicle was full everywhere, in-
side and out. Five other diligences left at the same
time, all full. We had engaged our seats two days
beforehand, to make sure, and paid tiie regulation
price, five dollars each ; but the rest of the company
were wiser ; they had trusted Baedeker, and waited ;
consequently some of them got their seats for one
or two dollars. Baedeker knows all about hotels,
railway and diligence companies, and speaks his
mind freely. He is a trustworthy friend of the
traveler.

We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we
were many miles away ; then he lifted his majestic
proportions high into the heavens, all white and cold
and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem
little and plebeian, and cheap and trivial.

As he passed out of sight at last, an old English-
man settled himself in his seat and said :

•'Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal
features of Swiss scenery — Mont Blanc and the
goitre — now for home T'

CHAPTER XVIII.

W /E spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva,
VV that delightful city where accurate time-pieces
are made for all the rest of the world, but whose
own clocks never give the correct time of day by
any accident.

Geneva is filled with pretty little shops, and the
shops are filled with the most enticing gimcrackery,
but if one enters one of these places he is at once
pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted
to buy this, that, and the other thing, that he is very
grateful to get out again, and is not at all apt to
repeat his experiment. The shopkeepers of the
smaller sort, in Geneva, are as troublesome and
persistent as are the salesmen of that monster hive
in Paris, the Grands Magasins du Louvre — an
establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pur-
suing, and insistence have been reduced to a science.

In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very
elastic — that is another bad feature. I was looking
in at a window at a very pretty string of beads,
suitable for a child. I was only admiring them ; I
had no use for them; I hardly ever wear beads.
16«» («s)

226 A Tramp Abroad

The shopwoman came out and offered them to me
for thirty-five francs. I said it was cheap, but I did
not need them.

** Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful I*'

I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for
one of my age and simplicity of character. She
darted in and brought them out and tried to force
them into my hands, saying:

*• Ah, but only see how lovely they are I Surely
monsieur will take them ; monsieur shall have them
for thirty francs. There, I have said it — it is a
loss, but one must live."

I dropped my hands, and tried to move her to
respect my unprotected situation. But no, she
dangled the beads in the sun before my face, ex-
claiming, •• Ah, monsieur cannot resist them !*' She
hung them on my coat button, folded her hands
resignedly, and said: ** Gone, — and for thirty
francs, the lovely things — it is incredible I — but
the good God will sanctify the sacrifice to me."

I removed them gently, returned them, and walked
away, shaking my head and smiling a smile of silly
embarrassment while the passers-by halted to ob-
serve. The woman leaned out of her door, shook
the beads, and screamed after me :

•• Monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!"

I shook my head.

"Twenty-seven! It is a cruel loss, it is ruin—
but take them, only take them."

I still retreated, still wagging my head.

A Tramp Abroad 227

"Mon Dieu, they shall even go for twenty-six!
There, I have said it. Come!"

I wagged another negative. A nurse and a little
English girl had been near me, and were following
me, now. The shopwoman ran to the nurse, thrust
the beads into her hands, and said :

•'Monsieur shall have them for twenty-five!
Take them to the hotel — he shall send me the
money to-morrow — next day — when he likes."
Then to the child : •' When thy father sends me the
money, come thou also, my angel, and thou shalt
have something oh so pretty!"

I was thus providentially saved. The nurse re-
fused the beads squarely and firmly, and that ended
the matter.

The ''sights" of Greneva are not numerous. I
made one attempt to hunt up the houses once in-
habited by those two disagreeable people, Rousseau
and Calvin, but had no success. Then I concluded
to go home. I found it was easier to propose to do
that than to do it; for that town is a bewildering
place. I got lost in a tangle of narrow and crooked
streets, and stayed lost for an hour or two. Finally
I found a street which looked somewhat familiar,
and said to myself, " Now I am at home, I judge."
But I was wrong; this was ^^ Hell street." Pres-
ently I found another place which had a familiar look,
and said to myself, "Now I am at home, sure."
It was another error. This was " Purgatory street."
After a little I said, " Now I've got the right place,
o«»

228 A Tramp Abroad

anyway no, this is * Paradise street ' ; Vm

further from home than I was in the beginning/'
Those were queer names — Calvin was the author of
them, likely. •'Hell" and •* Purgatory '• fitted
those two streets like a glove, but the " Paradise"
appeared to be sarcastic.

I came out on the lake front, at last, and then I
knew where I was. I was walking along before the
glittering jewelry shops when I saw a curious per-
formance. A lady passed by, and a trim dandy
lounged across the walk in such an apparently care-
fully-timed way as to bring himself exactly in front
of her when she got to him ; he made no offer to
step out of the way; he did not apologize; he did
not even notice her. She had to stop still and let
him lounge by. I wondered if he had done that
piece of brutality purposely. He strolled to a chair
and seated himself at a small table; two or three
other males were sitting at similar tables sipping
sweetened water. I waited ; presently a youth came
by, and this fellow got up and served him the same
trick. Still, it did not seem possible that any one
could do such a thing deliberately. To satisfy my
curiosity I went around the block, and sure enough,
as I approached, at a good round speed, he got up
and lounged lazily across my path, fouling my
course exactly at the right moment to receive all my
weight. This proved that his previous performances
had not been accidental, but intentional.

I saw that dandy's curious game played after-

A Tramp Abroad 229

wards, in Paris, but not for amusement; not with a
motive of any sort, indeed, but simply from a selfish
indifference to other people's comfort and rights.
One does not see it as frequently in Paris as he
might expect to, for there the law says, in effect,
"it is the business of the weak to get out of the
way of the strong." We fine a cabman if he runs
over a citizen ; Paris fines the citizen for being run
over. At least so everybody says — but I saw
something which caused me to doubt; I saw a
horseman run over- an old woman one day, — the
police arrested him and took him away. That
looked as. if they meant to punish him.

It will not do for me to find merit in American
manners — for are they not the standing butt for the
jests of critical and polished Europe? Still, I must
venture to claim one little matter of superiority in
our manners; a lady may traverse our streets all
day, going and coming as she chooses, and she will
never be molested by any man ; but if a lady, un-
attended, walks abroad in the streets of London,
even at noonday, she will be pretty likely to be ac-
costed and insulted — and not by drunken sailors,
but by men who carry the look and wear the dress
of gentlemen. It is maintained that these people
are not gentlemen, but are a lower sort, disguised as
gentlemen. The case of Colonel Valentine Baker
obstructs that argument, for a man cannot become
an officer in the British army except he hold the
rank of gentleman. This person, finding himself

230 A Tramp Abroad

alone in a raflway compartment with an unprotected
girl, — but it is an atrocious story, and doubtless the
reader remembers it well enough. London must
have been more or less accustomed to Bakers, and
the wa3rs of Bakers, else London would have been
offended, and excited. Baker was ** imprisoned " —
in a parlor; and he could not have been more
visited, or more overwhelmed with attentions, if he
had committed six murders and then — while the
gallows was preparing — ** got religion '* — after the
manner of the holy Charles Peace, of saintly mem-
ory. Arkansaw — it seems a little indelicate to be
trumpeting forth our own superiorities,, and com-
parisons are alwa)rs odious, but still — Arkansaw
would certainly have hanged Baker. I do not say
she would have tried him first, but she would have
hanged him, aLaywBy.

Even the most degraded woman can walk our
streets unmolested, her sex and her weakness being
her sufficient protection. She will encounter less
polish than she would in the old world, but she will
run across enough humanity' to make up for it.

The music of a donkey awoke us early in the
morning, and we rose up and made ready for a
pretty formidable walk — to Italy; but the road was
so level that we took the train. We lost a good
deal of time by this, but it was no matter, we were
not in a hurry. We were four hours going to
Chambiry. The Swiss trains go upwards of three
miles an hour, in places, but they are quite safe.

A Tramp Abroad 231

That aged French town of Chambiry was as
quaint and cr'ooked as Heilbronn. A drowsy re-
poseful quiet reigned in the back streets which made
strolling through them very pleasant, barring the
almost unbearable heat of the sun. In one of these
streets, which was eight feet wide, gracefully curved,
and built up with small antiquated houses, I saw
three fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep)
taking care of them. From queer old-fashioned
windows along the curve projected boxes of bright
flowers, and over the edge of one of these boxes
hung the head and shoulders of a cat — asleep.
The five sleeping creatures were the only living
things visible in that street. There was not a sound ;
absolute stillness prevailed. It was Sunday; one
is not used to such dreamy Sundays on the Conti-
nent. In our part of the town it was different that
night. A regiment of brown and battered soldiers
had arrived home from Algiers, and I judged they
got thirsty on the way. They sang and drank till
dawn, in the pleasant open air.

We left for Turin at ten the next morning by a
railway which was profusely decorated with tunnels.
We forgot to take a lantern along, consequently we
missed all the scenery. Our compartment was full.
A ponderous tow-headed Swiss woman, who put on
many fine-lady airs, but was evidently more used to
washing linen than wearing it, sat in a corner seat
and put her legs across into the opposite one, prop-
ping them intermediately with her up-ended valise

232 A Tramp Abroad

In the seat thus pirated, sat two Americans, greatly
incommoded by that woman's majestic coffin-clad
feet. One of them begged her, politely, to remove
them. She opened her wide eyes and gave him a
stare I but answered nothing. By and by he pre-
ferred his request again, with great respectfulness.
She said, in good English, and in a deeply o£fended
tone, that she had paid her passage and was not
going to be bullied out of her ** rights " by ill-bred
foreigners, even if she was alone and unprotected.

**But I have rights, also, madam. My ticket
entitles me to a seat, but you are occupying half
of if

** I will not talk with you, sir. What right have
you to speak to me? I do not know you. One
would know you came from a land where there are
no gentlemen. No gentleman would treat a lady as
you have treated me.*'

*• I come from a region where a lady would hardly
give me the same provocation.'*

'* You have insulted me, sir I You have intimated
that I am not a lady — and I hope I am not one,
after the pattern of your country."

"I beg that you will give yourself no alarm on
that head, madam; but at the same time I must
insist — always respectfully — that you let me have
my seat."

Here the fragile laundress burst into tears and
sobs.

" I never was so insulted before! Never, never!

A Tramp Abroad 233

It is shameful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and
abuse an unprotected lady who has lost the use of
her limbs and cannot put her feet to the floor with-
out agony!"

•* Good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that
at first ! I offer a thousand pardons. And I offer
them most sincerely. I did not know — I could not
know — that anything was the matter. You are
most welcome to the seat, and would have been
from the first if I had only known. I am truly sorry
it all happened, I do assure you."

But he couldn't get a word of for^veness out of
her. She simply sobbed and snuffled in a subdued
but wholly unappeasable way for two long hours,
meantime crowding the man more than ever with
her undertaker-furniture and paying no sort of atten-
tion to his frequent and humble little efforts to do
something for her comfort. Then the train halted
at the Italian line and she hopped up and marched
out of the car with as firm a leg as any washer-
woman of all her tribe ! And how sick I was, to
see how she had fooled me.

Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roomi-
ness it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of
before, I fancy. It sits in the midst of a vast dead-
level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may
be had for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so
lavishly do they use it. The streets are extrava-
gantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, the
houses are huge and handsome, and compacted into

234 A Tramp Abroad

uniform blocks that stretch away as straight as an
arrow, into the distance. The sidewalks are about
as wide as ordinary European streets, and are cov-
ered over with a double arcade supported on great
stone piers or columns. One walks from one end
to the other of these spacious streets, under shelter
all the time, and all his course is lined with the
prettiest of shops and the most inviting dining-
houses.

There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with
the most wickedly-enticing shops, which is roofed
with glass, high aloft overhead, and paved with
soft-toned marbles laid in graceful figures; and at
night when this place is brilliant with gas and
populous with a sauntering and chatting and laugh-
ing multitude of pleasure-seekers, it is a spectacle
worth seeing.

Everything is on a large scale ; the public build-
ings, for instance — and they are architecturally im-
posing, too, as well as large. The big squares have
big bronze monuments in them. At the hotel they
gave us rooms that were alarming, for size, and a
parlor to match It was well the weather required
no fire in the parlor, for I think one might as well
have tried to warm a park. The place would have
a warm look, though, in any weather, for the win-
dow curtains were of red silk damask, and the walls
were covered with the same fire-hued goods — so,
also, were the four sofas and the brigade of chairs.
The furniture, the ornaments, the chandeliers, the

A Tramp Abroad 23 S

carpets, were all new and bright and costly. We
did not need a parlor, at all, but they said it be-
longed to the two bedrooms and we might use it if
we chose. Since it was to cost nothing, we were
not averse from using it, of course.

Turin must surely read a good deal, for it has
more bookstores to the square rod than any other
town I know of. And it has its own share of mili-
tary folk. The Italian officers' uniforms are very
much the most beautiful I have ever seen ; and, as
a general thing, the men in them were as handsome
as the clothes. They were not large men, but they
had fine forms, fine features, rich olive complexions,
and lustrous black eyes.

For several weeks I had been culling all the in-
formation I could about Italy, from tourists. The
tourists were all agreed upon one thing — one must
expect to be cheated at every turn by the Italians.
I took an evening walk in Turin, and presently came
across a little Punch and Judy show in one of the
great squares. Twelve or fifteen people constituted
the audience. This miniature theater was not much
bigger than a man's coffin stood on end ; the upper
part was open and displayed a tinseled parlor — a
good-sized handkerchief would have answered for a
drop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple of
candle-ends an inch long; various manikins the size
of dolls appeared on the stage and made long
speeches at each other, gesticulating a good deal,
and they generally had a fight before they got

236 A Tramp Abroad

through. They were worked by strings from above,
and the illusion was not perfect, for one saw not only
the strings but the brawny hand that manipulated
them — and the actors and actresses all talked in the
same voice, too. The audience stood in front of the
theater, and seemed to enjoy the performance heartily.

When the play was done, a youth in his shirt-
sleeves started around with a small copper saucer to
make a collection. I did not know how much to
put in, but thought I would be guided by my pre-
decessors. Unluckily, I only had two of these, and
they did not help me much because they did not
put in an3^ing. I had no Italian money, so I put
in a small Swiss coin worth about ten cents. The
youth finished his collection-trip and emptied the
result on the stage; he had some very animated
talk with the concealed manager, then he came
working his way through the little crowd — seeking
me, I thought. I had a mind to slip away, but
concluded I wouldn't; I would stand my ground,
and confront the villainy, whatever it was. The
youth stood before me and held up that Swiss coin,
sure enough, and said something. I did not under-
stand him, but I judged he was requiring Italian
money of me. The crowd gathered close, to listen.
I was irritated, and said, — in English, of course:

•* I know it's Swiss, but you'll take that or none.
I haven't any other."

He tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke
again. I drew my hand away, and said :

A Tramp Abroad 237

••iVi?, sir. I know all about you people. You
can't play any of your fraudful tricks on me. If
there is a discount on that coin, I am sorry, but I
am not going to make it good. I noticed that some
of the audience didn't pay you anything at all. You
let them go, without a word, but you come after m«
because you think I'm a stranger and will put up
with an extortion rather than have a scene. But
you are mistaken this time — you'll take that Swiss
money or none."

The youth stood there with the coin in his fingers,
nonplussed and bewildered; of course he had not
understood a word. An English-speaking Italian
spoke up, now, and said :

"You are misunderstanding the boy. He does
not mean any harm. He did not suppose you gave
him so much money purposely, so he hurried back
to return you the coin lest you might get away
before you discovered your mistake. Take it, and
give him a penny — that will make everything
smooth again."

I probably blushed, then, for there was occasion.
Through the interpreter I begged the boy's pardon,
but I nobly refused to take back the ten cents. I
said I was accustomed to squandering large sums in
that way — it was the kind of person I was. Then
I retired to make a note to the effect that in Italy
persons connected with the drama do not cheat.

The episode with the showman reminds me of a
dark chapter in my history. I once robbed an aged

CHAPTER XIX.

IN Mflan we spent most of our time in the vast and
beaotifttl Arcade or Gallery, or whatever it is
called. Blocks of tall new buildings of the most
sumptuous 9ort» rich with decoration and graced with
statues, the streets between these blocks roofed over
with glass at a great height, the pavements all of
smooth and variegated marble, arranged in tasteful
patterns— * little tables all over these marble streets,
people sitting at them, eating, drinking, or smoking
— crowds of other people strolling by — such is the
Arcade. I should like to live in it all the time. The
windows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open,
and one breakfasts there and enjoys the passing
show.

We wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever
was going on in the streets. We took one omnibus
ride, and as I did not speak Italian and could not
ask the price, I held out some copper coins to the
conductor, and he took two. Then he went and got
his tariff card and showed me that he had taken only
the right sum. So I made a note — Italian omnibus
conductors do not cheat.

(240)

A Tramp Abroad 241

Near the Cathedral I saw another mstance of
probity. An old man was peddling dolls and toy
fans. Two small American children bought fans,
and one gave the old man a franc and three copper
coins, and both started away ; but they were called
back, and the franc and one of the coppers were
restored to them. Hence it is plain that in Italy,
parties connected with the drama and with the omni-
bus and toy interests do not cheat.

The stocks of goods in the shop were not exten-
sive, generally. In the vestibule of what seemed to
be a clothing store, we saw eight or ten wooden
dummies grouped together, clothed in woolen busi-
ness suits and each marked with its price. One suit
was marked 45 francs — nine dollars. Harris step-
ped in and said he wanted a suit like that. Nothing
easier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy,
brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and
shipped the clothes to the hotel. He said he did
not keep two suits of the same kind in stock, but
manu£actttred jt second when it was needed to re-
clothe the dummy.

In another quarter we found six Italians engaged
in a violent quarrel. They danced fiercely about,
gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs,
their whole bodies; they would rush forward oc-
casionally in a sudden access of passion and shake
their fists in each other's very faces. We lost half
an hour there, waiting to help cord up the dead, but
they finally embraced each other afiEectionately, and
i6 *•

242 A Tramp Abroad

the trouble was all over. The episode was interest-
ing, but we could not have afforded all that time to
it if we had known nothing was going to come of it
but a reconciliation. Note made — in Italy, people
who quarrel cheat the spectator.

We had another disappointment afterward. We
approached a deeply interested crowd, and in the
midst of it found a fellow wildly chattering and
gesticulating over a box on the ground which was
covered with a piece of old blanket. Every little
while he would bend down and take hold of the edge
of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingers,
as if to show there was no deception — chattering
away all the while, — but always, just as I was ex-
pecting to see a wonderful feat of legerdemain, he
would let go the blanket and rise to explain further.
However, at last he uncovered the box and got out
a spoon with a liquid in it, and held it fair and
frankly around, for people to see that it was all
right and he was taking no advantage — his chatter
became more excited than ever. I supposed he was
going to set fire to the liquid and swallow it, so I
was greatly wrought up and interested. I got a cent
ready in one hand and a florin in the other, intend-
ing to give him the former if he survived and the
latter if he killed himself — for his loss would be my
gain in a literary way, and I was willing to pay a fair
price for the item — but this impostor ended his in-
tensely moving performance by simply adding some
powder to the liquid and polishing the spoon!

A Tramp Abroad 243

Then he held it aloft, and he could not have shown
a wilder exultation if he had achieved an immortal
miracle. The crowd applauded in a gratified way>
and it seemed to me that history speaks the truth
when it says these children of the south are easily
entertained.

We spent an impressive hour in the noble cathe-
dral, where long shafts of tinted light were cleaving
through the solemn dimness from the lofty windows
and falling on a pillar here, a picture there, and a
kneeling worshiper yonder. The organ was mutter-
ing, censers were swinging, candles were glinting on
the distant altar and robed priests were filing silently
past them ; the scene was one to sweep all frivolous
thoughts away and steep the soul in a holy calm.
A trim young American lady paused a yard or two
from me, fixed her eyes on the mellow sparks fleck-
ing the far-off altar, bent her head reverently a
moment, then straightened up, kicked her train into
the air with her heel, caught it deftly in her hand,
and marched briskly out.

We visited the picture galleries and the other regu-
lation ** sights " of Milan — not because I wanted to
write about them again, but to see if I had learned
anything in twelve years. I afterwards visited the
great galleries of Rome and Florence for the same
purpose. I found I had learned one thing. When
I wrote about the Old Masters before, I said the
copies were better than the originals. That was a
mistake of large dimensions. The Old Masters were

F**

244 A Tramp Abroad

still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine
contrasted with the copies. The copy is to the
original as the pallid, smart, inane new waxwork
group is to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of
living men and women whom it professes to duplicate.
There is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the
old pictures, which is to the eye what muffled and
mellowed sound is to the ear. That is the merit
which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and
is the one which the copy most conspicuously
lacks, and which the copyist must not hope to com-
pass. It was generally conceded by the artists with
whom I talked, that that subdued splendor, that
mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by age.
Then why should we worship the Old Master for
it, who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping Old
Time, who did? Perhaps the picture was a clanging
bell, until Time muffled it and sweetened it.

In conversation with an artist in Venice, I asked :
•• What is it that people see in the Old Masters? I
have been in the Doge's palace and I saw several
acres of very bad drawing, very bad perspective,
and very incorrect proportions. Paul Veronese's
dogs do not resemble dogs ; all the horses look like
bladders on legs ; one man had a right leg on the
left side of his body ; in the large picture where the
Emperor (Barbarossa?) is prostrate before the Pope,
there are three men in the foreground who are over
thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a
kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground ;

A Tramp Abroad 245

and according to the same scale, the Pope is 7 feet
high and the Doge is a shriveled dwarf of 4 feet."

The artist said :

•'Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they
did not care much for truth and exactness in minor
details; but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad
perspective, bad proportions, and a choice of sub-
jects which no longer appeal to people as strongly
as they did three hundred years ago, there is a some--
thing about their pictures which is divine — a some-
thing which is above and beyond the art of any
epoch since — a something which would be the
despair of artists but that they never hope or expect
to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it."

That is what he said — and he said what he be-
lieved ; and not only believed, but felt.

Reasoning, — especially reasoning without tech-
nical knowledge, — must be put aside, in cases of
this kind. It cannot assist the inquirer. It will lead
him, in the most logical progression, to what, in the
eyes of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion.
Thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspec-
tive, indifference to truthful detail, color which
gets its merit from time, and not from the artist —
these things constitute the Old Master; conclusion,
the Old Master was a bad painter, the Old Master
was not an Old Master at all, but an Old Apprentice.
Your friend the artist will grant your premises, but
deny your conclusion ; he will maintain that notwith-
standing this formidable list of confessed defects,

246 A Tramp Abroad

there is still a something that is divine and unap-
proachable about the Old Master, and that there is
no arguing the fact away by any system of reason-
ing whatever.

I can believe that. There are women who have
an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them
beautiful to their intimates ; but a cold stranger who
tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty
would fan. He would say of one of these women :
This chin is too short, this nose is too long, this fore-
head is too high, this hair is too red, this complexion
is too pallid, the perspective of the entire composi-
tion is incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not
beautiful. But her nearest friend might say, and
say truly, ''Your premises are right, your logic is
faultiess, but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless ;
she is an Old Master — she is beautiful, but only to
such as know her ; it is a beauty which cannot be
formulated, but it is there, just the same.''

I found more pleasure in contemplating the Old
Masters this time than I did when I was in Europe
in former years, but still it was a calm pleasure;
there was nothing overheated about it. When I was
in Venice before, I think I found no picture which
stirred me much, but this time there were two which
enticed me to the Doge's palace day after day, and
kept me there hours at a time. One of these was
Tintoretto's three-acre picture in the Great Council
Chamber. When I saw it twelve years ago I was
not strongly attracted to it — the guide told me it

A Tramp Abroad

247

was an insurrection in heaven — but this was an
error.

The movement of this great work is very fine.
There are ten thousand figures, and they are all
doing something. There is a wonderful "go " to the
whole composition. Some of the figures are diving
headlong downward, with clasped hands, others are
swimming through the cloud-shoals, — some on their
faces, some on their backs — great processions of
bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftly
centerwards from various
outlying directions — every-
where is enthusiastic joy,
there is rushing movement
everywhere. There are fif-
teen or twenty figures scat-
tered here and there, with
book^ but they cannot keep
their attention on their read-
ing — they offer the books
to others, but no one wishes
to read, now. The Lion of
St. Mark is there with his
book; St. Mark is there
with his pen uplifted; he
and the Lion are looking
each other earnestly in the
face, disputing about the way to spell a word — the
Uon looks up in rapt admiration while St. Mark
spells. This is wonderfully interpreted by the

THB UON OP ST. MARK

248 A Tramp Abroad

artist. It is the master stroke of this incomparable
painting.

I visited the place daily, and never grew tired of
looking at that grand picture. As I have intimated,
the movement is almost unimaginably vigorous; the
figures are singing, hosannahing, and many are blow-
ing trumpets. So vividly is noise sug^sted, that
spectators who become absorbed in the picture
almost always fall to shouting comments in each
other's ears, making ear trumpets of their curved
hands, fearing they may not otherwise be heard.
One often sees a tourist, with the eloquent tears
pouring down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his
wife's ear, and hears him roar through them,
••OH, TO BE THERE AND AT REST!"

None but the supremely great in art can produce
effects like these with the silent brush.

Twelve years ago I could not have appreciated this
picture. One year ago I could not have appreciated
It. My study of Art in Heidelberg has been a noble
education to me. All that I am to-day in Art, I
owe to that.

The other great work which fascinated me was
Bassano's immortal Hair Trunk. This is in the
Chamber of the Council of Ten. It is in one of the
three forty-foot pictures which decorate the walls of
the room. The composition of this picture is be-
yond praise. The Hair Trunk is not hurled at the
stranger's head, — so to speak* — as the chief feature
of an immortal work so often is; no, it is carefully

A Tramp Abroad 249

guarded from prominence, it is subordinated, it is
restrained, it is most deftly and cleverly held in re-
serve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up
to, by the master, and consequently when the spec-
tator reaches it at last, he is taken unawares, he is
unprepared, and it bursts upon him with a stupefy-
ing surprise.

One is lost in wonder at all the thought and care
which this elaborate planning must have cost. A
general glance at the picture could never suggest
that there was a hair trunk in it ; the Hair Trunk is
not mentioned in the title even, — which is, *• Pope
Alexander III and the Doge Ziani, the Conqueror of
the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa; " you see, the
title is actually utilized to help divert attention from
the Trunk; thus, as I say, nothing suggests the
presence of the Trunk, by any hint, yet everything
studiedly leads up to it, step by step. Let us ex-
amine into this, and observe the exquisitely artful
artlessness of the plan.

At the extreme left end of the picture are a couple
of women, one of them with a child looking over her
shoulder at a wounded man sitting with bandaged
head on the ground. These people seem needless,
but no, they are there for a purpose; one cannot
look at them without seeing the gorgeous procession
of grandees, bishops, halberdiers, and banner-bear-
ers which is passing along behind them ; one cannot
see the procession without feeling a curiosity to fol-
low ft and learn whither it is going; it leads him to

250 A Tramp Abroad

the Pope, in the center of the picture, who is talk-
ing with the bonnetless Doge — talking tranquilly,
too, although within 12 feet of them a man is beat-
ing a drum, and not far from the drummer two per-
sons are blowing horns, and many horsemen are
plunging and rioting about — indeed, 22 feet of this
great work is all a deep and happy holiday serenity
and Sunday-school procession, and then we come
suddenly upon 11^ feet of turmoil and racket and
insubordination. This latter state of things is not
an accident, it has its purpose. But for it, one would
linger upon the Pope and the Doge, thinking them
to be the motive and supreme feature of the picture ;
whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously,
to see what the trouble is about. Now at the very
end of this riot, within 4 feet of the end of the
picture, and full 36 feet from the beginning of it,
the Hair Trunk bursts with an electrifying sudden-
ness upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfec-
tion, and the great master's triumph is sweeping and
complete. From that moment no other thing in those
forty feet of canvas has any charm; one sees the
Hair Trunk, and the Hair Trunk only — and to see
it is to worship it. Bassano even placed objects in
the immediate vicinity of the Supreme Feature whose
pretended purpose was to divert attention from it
yet a little longer and thus delay and augment the
surprise; for instance, to the right of it he has
placed a stooping man with a cap so red that it is
sure to hold the eye for a moment — to the left of

A Tramp Abroad 251

it, some 6 feet away, he has placed a red-coated man
on an inflated horse, and that coat plucks your eye
to that locality the next moment — then, between the
Trunk and the red horseman he has intruded a man,
naked to his waist, who is carrying a fancy flour-
sack on the middle of his back instead of on his
shoulder — this admirable feat interests you, of
course — keeps you at bay a little longer, like a
sock or a jacket thrown to the pursuing wolf — but
at last, in spite of all distractions and detentions,
the eye of even the most dull and heedless spectator
is sure to fall upon the World's Masterpiece, and in
that moment he totters to his chair or leans upon
his guide for support.

Descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily
be imperfect, yet they are of value. The top of the
Trunk is arched ; the arch is a perfect half circle, in
the Roman style of architecture, for in the then rapid
decadence of Greek art, the rising influence of Rome
was already beginning to be felt in the art of the
Republic. The Trunk is bound or bordered with
leather all around where the lid joins the main body.
Many critics consider this leather too cold in tone ;
but I consider this its highest merit, since it was
evidently made so to emphasize by contrast the im-
passioned fervor of the hasp. The high lights in
this part of the work are cleverly managed, the motif
is admirably subordinated to the ground tints, and
the technique is very fine. The brass nail-heads are
in the purest style of the early Renaissance. The

2S2 A Tramp Abroad

strokes, herei are very firm and bold — eveiy nail-
head is a portrait The handle on the end of the
Trunk has evidently been retouched — I think, with
a piece of chalk — but one can still see the inspira-
tion of the Old Master in the tranquil, almost too
tranquil, hang of it. The hair of this Trunk is real
hair — so to speak — white in patches, broMm in
patches. The details are finely worked out; the
repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive
attitude is charmingly expressed. There is a feeling
about this part of the work which lifts it to the high-
est altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism van-
ishes away — one recognizes that there is soul here.

View this Trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a
marvel, it is a miracle. Some of the effects are very
daring, approaching even to the boldest flights of the
rococo, the sirocco, and the Byzantine schools —
yet the master's hand never falters — it moves on,
calm, majestic, confident, — and, with that art which
conceals art, it finally casts over the tout ensemble^
by mysterious methods of its own, a subtle some-
thing which refines, subdues, etherealizes the arid
components and endues them with the deep charm
and gracious witchery of poesy.

Among the art treasures of Europe there are pic-
tures which approach the Hair Trunk — there are
two which may be said to equal it, possibly — but
there is none that surpasses it. So perfect is the
Hair Trunk that it moves even persons who or-
dinarily have no feeling for art. When an Erie bag-

A Tramp Abroad 253

gagemaster saw it two years ago, he could hardly
keep from checking it; and once when a customs
inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed
upon it in silent rapture for some moments, then
slowly and unconsciously placed one hand behind
him with the palm uppermost, and got out his chalk
with the other. These facts speak for themselves.

CHAPTER XX.

ONE lingers about the Cathedral a good deal, in
Venice. There is a strong fascination about
It — partly because it is so old, and partly because
it is so ugly. Too many of the world's famous
buildings fail of one chief virtue — harmony; they
are made up of a methodless mixture of the ugly
and the beautiful ; this is bad ; it is confusing, it is
unrestful. One has a sense of uneasiness, of dis-
tress, without knowing why. But one is calm before
St. Mark, one is calm within it, one would be calm
on top of it, calm in the cellar; for its details are
masterfully ugly, no misplaced and impertinent
beauties are intruded anywhere ; and the consequent
result is a grand harmonious whole, of soothing,
entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness.
One's admiration of a perfect thing always grows,
never declines; and this is the surest evidence to
him that it is perfect. St. Mark is perfect. To me
it soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it
was difficult to stay away from it, even for a little
while. Every time its squat domes disappeared
from my view, I had a despondent feeling; when-

(254)

A Tramp Abroad 255

ever they reappeared, I felt an honest rapture — I
have not known any happier hours than those I
daily spent in front of Florian's, looking across the
Great Square at it. Propped on its long row of low
thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes,
it seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative
walk.

St. Mark is not the oldest building in the world,
of course, but it seems the oldest, and looks the
oldest — especially inside. When the ancient mo-
saics in its walls become damaged, they are repaired
but not altered ; the grotesque old pattern is pre-
served. Antiquity has a charm of its own, and to
smarten it up would only damage it. One day I
was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule
looking up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work,
in mosaic, illustrative of the command to ** multiply
and replenish the earth." The Cathedral itself had
seemed very old ; but this picture was illustrating a
period in history which made the building seem
young by comparison. But I presently found an
antique which was older than either the battered
Cathedral or the date assigned to that piece of his-
tory; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as large as the
crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble
bench, and had been sat upon by tourists until it
was worn smooth. Contrasted with the inconceiv-
able antiquity of this modest fossil, those other
things were flippantly modern — jejune — mere mat-
ters of day-before-yesterday. The sense of the old-

256 A Tramp Abroad

ness of the Cathedral vanished away under the
influence of this truly venerable presence.

St. Mark's is monumental; it is an imperishablG
remembrancer of the profound and simple piety of
the Middle Ages. Whoever could ravish a column
from a pagan temple, did it and contributed his
swag to this Christian one. So this fane is upheld
by several hundred acquisitions procured in that
peculiar way. In our day it would be immoral to
go on the highway to get bricks for a church, but
it was no sin in the old times. St. Mark's was itself
the victim of a curious robbery once. The thing is
set down in the history of Venice, but it might be
smuggled into the Arabian Nights and not seem out
of place there :

Nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a
Candian named Stammato, in the suite of a prince
of the house of Este, was allowed to view the riches
of St. Mark. His sinful eye was dazzled and he hid
himself behind an altar, with an evil purpose in his
heart, but a priest discovered him and turned him
out. Afterward he got in again — by false keys,
this time. He went there, night after night, and
worked hard and patiently, all alone, overcoming
difficulty after difficulty with his toil, and at last
succeeded in removing a great block of the marble
paneling which walled the lower part of the treasury;
this block he fixed so that he could take it out and
put it in at will. After that, for weeks, he spent all
his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it

A Tramp Abroad 257

in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure,
and always slipping back to his obscure lodgings
before dawn, with a duke's ransom under his cloak.
He did not need to grab, haphazard, and run —
there was no hurry. He could make deliberate and
well-considered selections; he could consult his
aesthetic tastes. One comprehends how undisturbed
he was, and how safe from any danger of interrup-
tion, when it is stated that he even carried of! a
unicorn's horn — a mere curiosity — which would
not pass through the egress entire, but had to be
sawn in two — a bit of work which cost him hours
of tedious labor. He continued to store up his
treasures at home until his occupation lost the charm
of novelty and became monotonous ; then he ceased
from it, contented. Well he might be ; for his col-
lection, raised to modern values, represented nearly
$50,000,000 !

He could have gone home much the richest citizen
of his country, and it might have been years before
the plunder was missed; but he was human — he
could not enjoy his delight alone, he must have
somebody to talk about it with. So he exacted a
solemn oath from a Candian noble named Crioni,
then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his
breath away with a sight of his glittering hoard.
He detected a look in his friend's face which excited
his suspicion, and was about to slip a stiletto into
him when Crioni saved himself by explaining that
that look was only an expression of supreme and
17»»

258 A Tramp Abroad

happy astonishment. Stammato made Crioni a
present of one of the state's principal jewels — a
huge carbuncle, which afterward figured in the
Ducal cap of state — and the pair parted. Crioni
went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal,
and handed over the carbuncle as evidence. Stam-
mato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the
old-time Venetian promptness. He was hanged
between the two great columns in the Piazza — with
a gilded rope, out of compliment to his love of
gold, perhaps. He got no good of his booty at
all — it was all recovered.

In Venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell
to our lot on the Continent •— a home dinner with a
private family. If one could always stop with
private families, when traveling, Europe would have
a charm which it now lacks. As it is, one must
live in the hotels, of course, and that is a sorrowful
business. A man accustomed to American food
and American domestic cookery would not starve to
death suddenly in Europe; but I think he would
gradually waste away, and eventually die.

He would have to do without his accustomed
morning meal. That is too formidable a change
altogether; he would necessarily suffer from it. He
could get the shadow, the sham, the base counter-
feit of that meal ; but that would do him no good,
and money could not buy the reality.

To particularize: the average American's simplest
and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee

A Tramp Abroad 259

and beefsteak; well, in Europe, coffee is an un-
known beverage. You can get what the European
hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it resembles the
real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness. It is a
feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, and
almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an
American hotel. The milk used for it is what the
French call "Christian" milk, — milk which has
been baptized.

After a few months' acquaintance with European
'* coffee," one's mind weakens, and his faith with
it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of
home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top
of it, is not a mere dream, after all, and a thing
which never existed.

Next comes the European bread, — fair enough,
good enough, after a fashion, but cold; cold and
tough, and unsympathetic; and never any change,
never any variety, — always the same tiresome thing.

Next, the butter, — the sham and tasteless butter;
no salt in it, and made of goodness knows what.

Then there is the beefsteak. They have it in
Europe, but they don't know how to cook it.
Neither will they cut it right. It comes on the table
in a small, round, pewter platter. It lies in the
center of this platter, in a bordering bed of grease-
soaked potatoes ; it is the size, shape, and thickness
of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers cut
off. It is a little overdone, is rather dry, it tastes
pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm.

260 * A Tramp Abroad

Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert
thing; and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping
down out of a better land and setting before him a
mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick,
hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with
fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of
butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and
genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trick-
ling out and joining the gravy, archipels^oed with
mushrooms ; a township or two of tender, yellowish
fat gracing an outiying district of this ample county
of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the
sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place; and
imagine that the angel also adds a great cup of
American home-made coffee, with the cream a-froth
on top, some real butter, firm and yellow and fresh,
some smoking-hot biscuits, a plate of hot buckwheat
cakes, with transparent syrup, — could words de-
scribe the gratitude of this exile?

The European dinner is better than the European
breakfast, but it has its faults and inferiorities; it
does not satisfy. He comes to the table eager and
hungry; he swallows his soup, — there is an unde-
finable lack about it somewhere ; thinks the fish is
going to be the thing he wants, — eats it and isn't
sure ; thinks the next dish is perhaps the one that
will hit the hungry place, — tries it, and is conscious
that there was a something wanting about it, also.
And thus he goes on, from dish to dish, like a boy
after a butterfly which just misses getting caught

A Tramp Abroad 261

every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get
caught after all ; and at the end the exile and the
boy have fared about alike; the one is full, but
grievously unsatisfied, the other has had plenty of
exercise, plenty of interest, and a fine lot of hopes,
but he hasn't got any butterfly. There is here and
there an American who will say he can remember
rising from a European table d'hdte perfectiy satis-
fied ; but we must not overlook the fact that there is
also here and there an American who will lie.

The number of dishes is sufficient ; but then it is
such a monotonous variety of unstriking dishes. It
is an inane dead level of ** fair-to-middling." There
is nothing to accent it. Perhaps if the roast of
mutton or of beef, — a big, generous one, — were
brought on the table and carved in full view of the
client, that might give the right sense of earnestness
and reality to the thing; but they don't do that,
they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and so
you are perfectiy calm, it does not stir you in the
least. Now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the
broad of his back, with his heels in the air and the

rich juices oozing from his fat sides but I may

as well stop there, for they would not know how to
cook him. They can't even cook a chicken respect-
ably; and as for carving it, they do that with a
hatchet.

This is about the customary table d'hdte bill in
summer:

Soup (characterless).

262 A Tramp Abroad

Fish — sole, salmon, or whiting — usually toler-
ably good.

Roast — mutton or beef — tasteless — and some
last year's potatoes. .

A pite, or some other made dish — usually good
— •• considering."

One vegetable — brought on in state, and all
alone — usually insipid lentils, or string beans, or
indifferent asparagus.

Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper.

Lettuce-salad — tolerably good.

Decayed strawberries or cherries.

Sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this
is no advantage, as these fruits are of no account
anyway.

The grapes are generally good, and sometimes
there is a tolerably good peach, by mistake.

The variations of the above bill are trifling. After
a fortnight one discovers that the variations are only
apparent, not real ; in the third week you get what
you had the first, and in the fourth week you get
what you had the second. Three or four months of
this weary sameness will kill the robustest appetite.

It has now been many months, at the present
writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I
shall soon have one, — a modest, private affair, all
to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made
out a littie bill of fare, which will go home in the
steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive
— as follows :

A Tramp Abroad

263

Radishes. Baked apples, with

cream.
Fried oysters; stewed oysters.

Fr<^.
American coffee, with real cream.
American batter.
Fried chicken, Southern style.
Porter-house steak.
Saratoga potatoes.
Broiled chicken, Axnerican style.
Hot biscuits, Southern style.
Hot wheat-bread. Southern style.
Hot buckwheat cakes.
American toast. Qear maple

syrup.
Virginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the hall shell.
Cheny-stone dams.
San Francisco mussels, steamed.
Ojrster soup. Clam soup.
Philadelphia Terrapin soup.
Oysters roasted in shell — Northern

style.
Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad.
Baltimore perch.

Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheephead and croakers from New

Orleans.
Black bass from the Mississippi.
American roast beef.
Roast turkey. Thanksgiving style.
Cranbeny sauce. Celery.
Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.
Canvasback-duck, from Baltimore.

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries, which are
not to be doled out as if they were jewehy, but in a more liberal way.

Ice-water — not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, bat m the nncere
and capable refrigerator.

Prairie hens, from Illinois.

Missouri partridges, broiled.

'Possum. Coon.

Boston bacon and beans.

Bacon and greens. Southern style.

Hominy. Boiled onions. Tur*
nips.

Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus.

Butter Beans. Sweet potatoes.

Lettuce. Succotash. String beans.

Mashed potatoes. Catsup.

Boiled potatoes, in their skins.

New potatoes, minus the skins.

Early rose potatoes, roasted in the
ashes. Southern style, senred
hot.

Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vine-
gar. Stewed tomatoes.

Green com, cut from the ear and
served with butter and pepper.

Green com, on the ear.

Hot corn-pone, with chitlings»
Southem style.

Hot hoe-cake, Southem style.

Hot egg-bread, Southem style.

Hot light-bread, Southem style.

Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk.

Apple dumplings, with real cream.

Apple pie. Apple fritters.

Apple puffs, Southem style.

Peach cobbler, Southem style.

Peach pie. American mince pie.

Pumpkin pie. Squash pie.

All sorts of American pastry.

264 A Tramp Abroad

Americans intending to spend a year or so in
European hotels, will do well to copy this bill and
carry it along. They will find it an excellent thing
to get up an appetite with, in the dispiriting pres-
ence of the squalid table d'hdte.

Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any
more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange ;
for tastes are made, not bom. I might glorify my
bill of fare until I was tired; but after all, the
Scotchman would shake his head and say, '* Where's
your haggis?" and the Fijian would sigh and say,
•'Where's your missionary?"

I have a neat talent in matters pertaining to
nourishment. This has met with professional recog-
nition. I have often furnished recipes for cook-
books. Here are some designs for pies and things,
which I recently prepared for a friend's projected
cook-book, but as I forgot to furnish diagrams and
perspectives, they had to be left out, of course.
Recipe for an Ash-Cake.

Take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse
Indian meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt.
Mix well together, knead into the form of a
"pone," and let the pone stand a while, — not on
its edge, but the other way. Rake away a place
among the embers, lay it there, and cover it an inch
deep with hot ashes. When it is done, remove it ;
blow off all the ashes but one layer; butter that
one and eat.

N. B. No household should ever be without this

A Tramp Abroad 265

talisman. It has been noticed that tramps never
return for another ash-cake.

Recipe for New England Pie.
To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as
follows : Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency
of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. Work
this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned
up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and
kiln-dry it a couple of days in a mild but unvarying
temperature. Construct a cover for this redoubt in
the same way and of the same material. Fill with
stewed dried apples ; aggravate with cloves, lemon-
peel, and slabs of citron ; add two portions of New
Orleans sugar, then solder on the lid and set in a
safe place till it petrifies. Serve cold at breakfast
and invite your enemy.

Recipe for German Cojfee.
Take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil ; rub
a chiccory berry against a coffee berry, then convey
the former into the water. Continue the boiling and
evaporation until the intensity of the flavor and
aroma of the cofFee and chiccory has been diminished
to a proper degree ; then set aside to cool. Now
unharness the remains of a once cow from the plow,
insert them in a hydraulic press, and when you shall
have acquired a teaspoonful of that pale blue juice
which a German superstition regards as milk, modify

266 A Tramp Abroad

the malignity of its strength in a bucket of tepid
water and ring up the breakfast. Mix the beverage
in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep a
wet rag around your head to guard against over-
excitement.

To Carve Fowls in the German Fashion.
Use a club, and avoid the joints.

CHAPTER XXL

I WONDER why some things are? For instance,
Art is allowed as much indecent license to-day
as in earlier times — but the privileges of Literature
in this respect have been , sharply curtailed within
the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and
Smollett could portray the beastliness of their day
'in the beastliest language; we have plenty of foul
subjects to deal with in oiir day, but we are not
allowed to approach them very near, even with nice
and guarded forms of speech. But not so with Art.
The brush may still deal freely with any subject,
however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body
ooze sarcasm at every pore, to go about Ronie and
Florence and see what this last generation has been
doing with the statues. These works, which had
stood in innocent nakedness for ages, are all fig-
leaved now. Yes, every one of them. Nobody
noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody
can help noticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so
conspicuous. But the comical thing about it all, is,
that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid marble,
which would be still cold and unsuggestive without

(267)

268 A Tramp Abroad

this sham and ostentatious symbol of modesty,
whereas warm-blooded paintings which do really
need it have in no case been furnished with it.

At the door of the Uffizzi, in Florence, one is
confronted by statues of a man and a woman, nose-
less, battered, black with accumulated grime, — they
hardly suggest human beings — yet these ridiculous
creatures have been thoughtfully and conscientiously
fig-leaved by this fastidious generation. You enter,
and proceed to that most-visited little gallery that
exists in the world — the Tribune — and there,
against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf,
you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest,
the obscenest picture the world possesses — Titian's
Venus. It isn't that she is naked and stretched out
on a bed — no, it is the attitude of one of her arms
and hand. If I ventured to describe that attitude,
there would be a fine howl — but there the Venus
lies, for anybody to gloat over that wants to — and
there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art,
and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls steal-
ing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze
long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men
hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest.
How I should like to describe her — just to see what
a holy indignation I could stir up in the world —
just to hear the unreflecting average man deliver
himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all
that. The world says that no worded description of
a moving spectacle is a hundredth part as moving as

A Tramp Abroad 269

the same spectacle seen with one's own eyes — - yet
the world is willing to let its son and its daughter
and itself look at Titian's beast, but won't stand a
description of it in words. Which shows that the
world is not as consistent as it might be.

There are pictures of nude women which suggest
no impure thought — I am well aware of that. I
am not railing at such. What I am trying to em-
phasize is the fact that Titian's Venus is very far
from being one of that sort. Without any question
it was painted for a bagnio and it was probably re-
fused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth,
it is too strong for any place but a public Art
Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune ;
persons who have seen them will easily remember
which one I am referring to.

In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pic-
tures of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction
— pictures portraying intolerable suffering — pic-
tures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought
out in dreadful detail — and similar pictures are
being put on the canvas every day and publicly ex-
hibited — without a growl from anybody — for they
are innocent, they are inoffensive, being works of
art. But suppose a literary artist ventured to go
into a painstaking and elaborate description of one
of these grisly things — the critics would skin him
alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art
retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers.
Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the

270 A Tramp Abroad

wherefores and the consistencies of it — I haven't
got time.

Titian's Venus defiles and disgraces the Tribune,
there is no softening that fact, but his "Moses"
glorifies it. The simple truthfulness of this noble
work wins the heart and the applause of every
visitor, be he learned or ignorant. After wearying
one's self with the acres of stuffy, sappy, expression-
less babies that populate the canvases of the Old
Masters of Italy, it is refreshing to stand before this
peerless child and feel that thrill which tells you you
are at last in the presence of the real thing. This is
a human child, this is genuine. You have seen him
a thousand times — you have seen him just as he is
here — and you confess, without reserve, that Titian
was a Master. The doU-faces of other painted
babes may mean one thing, they may mean another,
but with the "Moses" the case is different. The
most famous of all the art critics has said, "There
is no room for doubt, here — plainly this child is in
trouble."

I consider that the " Moses " has no equal among
the works of the Old Masters, except it be the
divine Hair Trunk of Bassano. I feel sure that if
all the other Old Masters were lost and only these
two preserved, the world would be the gainer by it.

My sole purpose in going to Florence was to see
this immortal " Moses," and by good fortune I was
just in time, for they were already preparing to
remove it to a more private and better protected

A Tramp Abroad 271

place because a fashion of robbing the great galleries
was prevailing in Europe at the time.

I got a capable artist to copy the picture ; Panne-
maker, the engraver of Dora's books, engraved it
for me, and I have the pleasure of laying it before
the reader in this volume.

We took a turn to Rome and some other Italian
cities — then to Munich, and thence to Paris —
partly for exercise, but mainly because these things
were in our projected program, and it was only
right that we should be faithful to it.

From Paris I branched out and walked through
Holland and Belgium, procuring an occasional lift
by rail or canal when tired, and I had a tolerably
good time of it** by and large." I worked Spain
and other regions through agents to save time and
shoe leather.

We crossed to England, and then made the
homeward passage in the Cunarder GalliUy a very
fine ship. I was glad to get home — immeasurably
glad; so glad, in fact, that it did not seem possible
that anything could ever get me out of the country
again. I had not enjoyed a pleasure abroad which
seemed to me to compare with the pleasure I felt in
seeing New York harbor again. Europe has many
advantages which we have not, but they do not
compensate for a good many still more valuable
ones which exist nowhere but in our own country.
Then we are such a homeless lot when we are over

272 A Tramp Abroad

there t So are Europeans themselves, for that
matter. They live in dark and chilly vast tombs, —
cosdy enough, maybe, but without conveniences.
To be condemned to live as the average European
family lives would make life a pretty heavy burden
to the average American family.

On the whole, I think that short visits to Europe
are better for us than long ones. The former pre-
serve us from becoming Europeanized ; they keep
our pride of country intact, and at the same time
they intensify our afifection for our country and our
people ; whereas long visits have the effect of dull-
ing those feelings, — at least in the majority of
cases. I think that one who mixes much with
Americans long resident abroad must arrive at this

conclusion.

THE END

APPENDIX

Nothing gives such weight and

dignity to a book as an Appendix,

HerodtOm*

A

THE PORTIER

Omar KhayXm, the poet-prophet of Persia, trriting more than eight
hundred years ago, has said :

<* In the four parts of the earth are many that are able to write
learned books, many that are able to lead armies, and many also that
are able to govern kingdoms and empires; but few there be that can
keep a hotel."

A word about the European hotel porHer. He is a most admirable
invention, a most valuable convenience. He always wears a con-
spicuous uniform; he can always be found when he is wanted, for he
sticks dosely to his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke; he
speaks from four to ten languages; he is your surest help and refuge
in time of trouble or perplexity. He is not the clerk, he is not the
landlord; he ranks above the derk, and represents the landlord, who
is sddom seen. Instead of going to the derk for information, as we do
at home, you go to the portier. It is the pride of our average hotd
derk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride of the portier to know
everything. You ask the portier at what hours the trains leave, — he
tdls you instantly; or you ask him who is the best physidan in town; or
what it the hack tariff; or how many children the mayor has; or what
days die galleries are open, and whether a permit is required, and where
yoa are to get it, and what you must pay for it; or when the theaters
18«« (273)

274 A Tramp Abroad

open and doie, wliit the plays are to be, and the price of seats; or
iriMt is the newert thing in hats; or how the bills of mortality average;
or **Mbo stmck Billy Patterson." It does not matter what yon ask
him: in nine cases out of ten he knows, and in the tenth case he will
find oat for yon before you can turn around three times. There is noth-
ing he will not put his hand to. Suppose yon tell him you wish to go
from Hamburg to Peking by the way of Jericho, and are ignorant of
nmtes and prices, — the next morning he will hand yon a piece of paper
with the whole thing worked out on it to the last detail. Before you
have been long on European soil, you find yourself still saying: you are
rdying on Providence, but when you come to look closer you will see
that in reality you are relying on the portier. He discovers what is
pusiling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is, before you
can get tiie half of it out, and he prompt^ says, " Leave that to me."
Cooaeqaently, you easily drift into the habit of leaving eveiything to him.
Theie is a certain embarrassment about applying to the average American
hotd derk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity against rebuff; but
yon feel no embarrassment in your intercourse with the portier; he
receives your propositions with an enthusiasm which cheers, and plunges
into their accomplishment with an alacrity which almost inebriates. The
more requirements you can pile upon him, the better he likes it. Of
course the result is that you cease from doing anything for yourself. He
calls a hack when you want one; puts you into it; tells the driver
whither to take you; receives you like a long lost child when you return;
sends you about your business, does all the quarreling with the hack-
man himself, and pays him his money out of his own pocket. He sendis
for your theater tickets, and pays for them; he sends for any possible
article you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a postage stamp;
and when you leave, at last, you will find a subordinate seated with the
cab driver who will put you in your railway compartment, buy your
tickets, have your bagg;age weighed, bring you the printed tags, and tell
you eveiything is in your bill and paid for. At home you get such
elaborate, excellent, and willing service as this only in the best hotels of
our large cities; but in Europe you get it in the mere back countiy
towns just as well.

What is the secret of the portier*s devotion? It is very simple: he
gets/r/J, ami no salary. His fee is pretty closely regulated, too. If
you stay a week in the house, you give him five marks — a dollar and a
quarter, or about eighteen cents a day. If you stay a month, you

A Tramp Abroad 275

reduce this average somewhat. If you stay two or three months or
longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half. If you stay only
one day, you give the portier a mark.

The head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's; the Boots^
who not only blacks your boots and brushes your clothes, but is usually
the porter and handles your baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than
the head waiter; the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the Boots.
You fee only these four, and no one else. A German gentleman told
me that when he remained a week in a hotel, he gave the portier five
marks, the head waiter four, the Boots three, and the chambermaid
two; and if he staid three months he divided ninety marks among
them, in about the above proportions. Ninety marks make $22.50.

None of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel, though it
be a year, — except one of these four servants should go away in the
meantime; in that case he will be sure to come and bid you good-bye
and give you the opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him.
It is considered very bad policy to fee a servant while yon are still to
remain longer in the hotel, because if you gave him too little he m^ht
neglect you afterward, and if you gave him too much he might neglect
somebody else to attend to you. It is considered best to keep his
expectations <* on a string " until your stay is concluded.

I do not know whether hotel servants in New York get any wages
or not, but I do know that in some of the hotels there the feeing system
in vogue is a heavy burden. The waiter expects a quarter at breakfast,
— and gets it. You have a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets
a quarter. Your waiter at dinner is another stranger, — consequently
he gets a quarter. The boy who carries your satchel to your room and
lights your gas fumbles around and hangs around significantly, and you
fee him to get rid of him. Now you may ring for ice water; and ten
minutes later for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterwards, for a cigar;
and by and by for a newspaper, — and what is the result? Why, a new
boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled around until you
have paid him something. Suppose you boldly put your foot down,
and say it is the hotel's business to pay its servants? — and suppose you
stand your ground and stop feeing? You will have to ring your bell ten
or fifteen times before you get a servant there; and when he goes off to
fill your order you wUl grow old and infirm before you see him again.
You may struggle nobly for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an
adamantine sort of person, but in the meantime you will have been so

276 A Tramp Abroad

wictdiedly terred, tud to insolently, that yon wOl luuil down your
colon, and go to u n pofc riah ing yoandf with fees.

It seems tome that it would be a happf idea to import the Euxopean
iecinf qrstem into America. I believe it would result in getting even
the beQs of the Philadelphia hoteb answered, and cheerful service
lenderecl*

The greatest American hotels keep anvnber of clerks and a cashier,
and pay them salaries which mount up to a consadersble total in the
course of a year. The great continental hoteb keep a cashier on a
trifling salary, and a portier w^ pays M« hcUl a saiary. By the latter
system both the hotel and the public save money and are better served
than by our system. One of our consols told me that the poitier of a
great Berlin hotel paid $5,000 a year for his position, and yet cleared
$6»ooo for himself. The position of portier in the chief hotels of
Saratoga, Long Branch, New Yoik, and similar centers of resort, would
be one which the holder could afford to pqr even more than $5,000 for,
perhaps.

When we borrowed the feeing fashion from Europe a dosen years
ago, the salary system ought to have been discontinued, of course. We
might make this correction now, I should think. And we might add
the portier, too. Since I first began to study the portier, I have had
opportunities to observe him in the chief cities of Germany, Switzer-
land, and Italy; and the more I have seen of him the more I have
wished that he might be adopted in America, and become there, as he
is in Europe, the stranger's guardian angel.

Yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just as true to-day:
" Few there be that can keep hotel." Perhaps it is because the land-
lords and their subordinates have in too many cases taken up their trade
without first learning it. In Europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught.
The apprentice b^;ins at the bottom of the ladder and masters the
several grades one after the other. Just as in our countiy printing-
offices the apprentice first learns how to sweep out and bring water;
then leams to "roll"; then to sort **pi"; then to set type; and
finally rounds and completes his education with )6b-work and press-
work; so the landlord-apprentice serves as call-boy; then as under-
waiter; then as a parlor waiter; then as head-waiter, in which position he
often has to make out all the bills; then as derk or cashier; then as portier.
His trade is learned now, and by and by he will assume the style and
dignity of landlord, and be found conducting a hotel of his own.

A Tramp Abroad 277

Now in Europe, the same as in America, when a man has kept a
hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years as to give it a great
reputation, he has his reward. He can Uve prosperously on that reputa-
tion. He can let his hotel run down to the last d^ee of shabbiness
and yet have it full of people all the time. For instance, there is the
Hotel d^ Ville, in Milan. It swarms with mice and fleas, and if the
rest of the world were destroyed it could furnish dirt enough to start
another one with. The food would create an insurrection in a poor-
house; and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel makes up
its loss by over-charging you on all sorts of trifles, — and without
making any denials or excuses about it, either. But the H6tel de ViUe's
old excellent reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with
travelers who would be elsewhere if they had only had some wise friend
to warn them*

5

HEIDELBERG CASTLE

Hbdkubig CAsnx nmst bcve been veiy beantiM befofe the Fi^^
battered and bndsed and aoovdied it two hundred yean ago. The stone
IS brown, with a pmldsh tint, and does not seem to stain easily. The
dainty and daborate ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as
delicatdy carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a draw-
ing-room rather than for the outside of a house. Many fruit and
flower-dnsteis, human heads and grim projecting hon's heads are still
as perfect in every detail as if they were new. But the statnes which
are ranked between the windows have suffered. These are life-size
rtatoes of old-time emperors, electors, and similar grandees, clad in
mail and bearing ponderous swords. Some have lost an aim, some a
head, and one poor feUow is chopped off at the middle. There is a
saying that if a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across
the comt to the casde front without saying anything, he can make a
wish and it will be fulfilled. Bat they say that the tmth of this thing
has never had a chance to be proved, for the reason that before any
stranger can walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the
beauty of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from

A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could not
have been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it is
buried in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on the
contrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks down
through shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilight
reigns and the sun cannot intrude. Nature knows how to garnish a
ruin to get the best effect. One of these old towers is split down the
middle, and one half has tumbled aside. It tumbled in such a way as
to ertaMish itself in a picturesque attitude. Then aU it lacked was a

(278)

A Tramp Abroad 279

fitting drapeiy, and Nature has furnished that; she has robed the
nigged mass in flowers and verdure, and made it a charm to the eye.
The standing half exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like
open, toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have done
their work of grace. The rear portion of the tower has not been
neglected, either, but is clothed with a clinging garment of polished ivy
which hides the wounds and stains of time. Even the top is not left
bare, but is crowned with -a flourishing group of trees and shrubs.
Misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done for the human
character sometimes — improved it.

A gentleman remarked, one day, that it might have been fine to live
in the castle in the day of its prime, but that we had one advantage
which its vanished inhabitants lacked — the advantage of having a
charming ruin to visit and muse over. But that was a hasty idea.
Those people had the advantage of us. They had the fine castle to live
in, and they could cross the Rhine vaUey and muse over the stately ruin
of Trifels besides. The Trifels people, in their day, five hundred years
ago, could go and muse over majestic ruins which have vanished, now,
to the last stone. There have always been ruins, no doubt; and there
have always been pensive people to sigh over them, and asses to scratch
upon them their names and the important date of their visit. Within a
hundred years after Adam left Eden, the guide probably gave the usual
general flourish with his hand and said: "Place where the animals
were named, ladies and gentlemen; place where the tree of the forbid-
den fruit stood; exact spot where Adam and Eve first met; and here,
ladies and gentlemen, adorned and hallowed by the names and addresses
of three generations of tourists, we have the crumbling remains of Cain's
altar, — fine old ruin!" Then, no doubt, he taxed them a shekel
apiece and let them go.

An illumination of Heidelberg Castle is one of the sights of Europe.
The Castle's picturesque shape; its commanding situation, midway up
the steep and wooded mountain, side; its vast size, — these features
combine to make an illumination a most effective spectacle. It is
necessarily an expensive show, and consequently rather infrequent.
Therefore whenever one of these exhibitions is to take place, the news
goes about in the papers and Heidelberg is sure to be full of people on
that night. I and my agent had one of these opportunities, and im*
proved it.

About half past seven on the appointed evening wo croised the

280 A Tramp Abroad

lower bridge, with some American students, in a pouring rain, and
started up the road which borders the Neunheim side of the river.
This roadway was densely packed with carriages and foot passengers;
the former of all ages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes. This
black and solid mass was struggling painfully onward, through the slop,
the darkness, and the deluge. We waded along for three-quarteis of a
mile, and finally took up a position in an unsheltered beer garden
directly opposite the Castle. We could not i//the Castle, — or any-
thing else, for that matter, — but we could dimly discern the outlines of
the mountain over the way, through the pervading blackness, and knew
whereabouts the Castle was located. We stood on one of the hundred
benches in the garden, under our umbrellas; the other ninety-nine were
occupied by standing men and women, and they also had umbrellas.
All the region round about, and up and down the river-road, was a
dense wilderness of humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of
carriage tops and umbrellas. Thus we stood during two drenching
hours. No rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone points
of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little cooling streams of vrater
down my neck, and sometimes into my ears, and thus kept me from
getting hot and impatient. I had the rheumatism, too, and had heard
that this was good for it. Afterward, however, I was led to believe that
the water treatment is n^ good for rheumatism. There were even little
girls in that dreadful place. A man held one in his arms, just in front
of me, for as much as an hour, with umbrella-drippings soaking into
her clothing all the time.

In the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us to have to
wait, but when the illumination did at last come, we felt repaid. It
came unexpectedly, of course, •— things alwa3rs do, that have been long
looked and longed for. With a perfectly breath-taking suddeimess
several vast sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out of
the black throats of the castle towers, accompanied by a thundering
crash of sound, and instantly every detail of the prodigious ruin stood
revealed against the mountain side and glowing with an almost intoler-
able splendor of fire and color. For some little time the whole building
was a blinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout thick col-
umns of rockets aloft, and overhead the sky was radiant with arrowy
bolts which clove their way to the zenith, paused, curved gracefully
downward, then burst into brilliant fountain sprays of richly-colored
sparks. The red fires died slowly down, within the castle» and pre-

A. Tramp Abroad 281

sently the shell grew nearly black outside; the angry glare that shone
out through the broken arches and innumerable sashless windows, now,
reproduced the aspect which the Castle must have borne in the old time
when the French spoilers saw the monster bonfire which th^ had made
there fading and smouldering toward extinction.

While we still gazed and enjoyed, the ruin was suddenly enveloped
in ffoUing and tumbling volumes of vaporous green fire; then in
dairiing purple ones; then a mixture of many colors followed, and
drowned the great fabric in its blended splendors. Meantime the
nearest bridge had been illuminated, and from several rafts anchored in
the river, meteor showers of rockets, Roman candles, bombs, serpents,
and Catharine wheds were being discharged in wasteful profusion
into the sky, — a marvelous sight indeed to a person as little used
to such spectacles as I was. For a while the whole region about us
seemed as bright as day, and yet the rain was falling in torrents all
the time. The evening's entertainment presently closed, and we joined
the innumerable caravan of half-drowned spectators, and waded home
again.

The Castle grounds are veiy ample and veiy beautiful; and as they
joined the Hotel grounds, with no fences to climb, but only some nobly
shaded stone stairways to descend^ we spent a part of nearly every day
in idling through their smooth walks and leafy groves. There was an
attractive spot among the trees where were a great many wooden tables
and benches; and there one could sit in the shade and pretend to sip
at his loamy beaker of beer while he inspected the crowd. I say pre-
tend, because I only pretended to sip, without really sipping. That is
the pdite way; but when you are ready to go, you empty the beaker at
a draught. There was a brass band, and it furnished excellent music
every afternoon. Sometimes so many people came that every seat was
occupied, every table filled. And never a rough in the assemblage, —
all nicely dressed fathers and mothers, young gentlemen and ladies and
children; and plenty of university students and glittering officers; with
here and there a gray professor, or a peaceful old lady with her knitting;
and always a sprinkling of gawky foreigners. Everybody had his glass
of beer before him, or his cup of coffee, or his bottle of wine, or his
hot cutlet and potatoes; young ladies chatted, or fanned themselves, or
wrought at their crotcheting or embroidering; the students fed sugar to
their dogs, or discussed duels, or illustrated new fendng-tricks with their
little canes; and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, and every-

282 A Tramp Abroad

where peace and sood-wfll to men. The trees were jubOant with birds,
and the paths with roUicktng children. One could have a seat in that
place and plenty of music, any afternoon, for about eight cents, or a
family ticket for the season for two dollars.

For a change, when you wanted one, yon could stroll to the castle,
and burrow among its dungeons, or dunb about its ruined towers, or
visit its interior shows, — the great Heidelberg Tun, for instance.
Eveiybod^ has heard of the great Heidelbeig Tun, and most people
have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine cask as big as a cottage, and some
traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other
iraditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrds. I think it likely
that one of these statements is a mistake, , and the other one a lie.
However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of conse-
quence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty,
Ustoiy sqrs. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could exdte but
little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster
cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, out-
side, any day, free of expense. What could this cask have hecn built
lor? The more one studies over that, the more uncertain and unhappy
he becomes. Some historians say that thirty couples, some say thirty
thousand couples, can dance on the head of this cask at the same time.
Even this does not seem to me to account for the building of it. It
does not even throw light on it. A profound and scholarly English-
man, — a specialist, — who had made the great Heidelberg Tun his sole
study for fifteen years, told me he had at last satisfied himself that the
ancients built it to make German cream in. He said that the average
German cow yielded from one to two and a half teaspoonfuls of milk,
when she was not worked in the plow or the hay wagon more than
eighteen or nineteen hours a day. This milk was very sweet and good,
and of a beautiful transparent bluish tint; but in order to get cream
from it in the most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary.
Now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect several
milldngs in a teacup, pour it into the Great Tun, fill up with water, and
then skim off the cream from time to time as the needs of the German
Empire demanded.

This b^;an to look reasonable. It certainly b^;an to account for
the German cream which I had encountered and marvded over in so
many hotels and restaurants. But a thought struck me,—

** Why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacnp of milk

A Tramp Abroad 283

and his own cask of water, and mix them, without maldng a govern-
ment matter of it ? "

" Where could he get a cask large enough to contain the right pro-
portion of water?'*

Veiy true. It was plain that the Englishman had studied the matter
from all sides. Still I thought I might catch him on one point; so I
asked him why the modem empire did not make the nation's cream in
the Heidelberg Tun, instead of leavii^ it to rot away unused. But he
answered as one prepared, —

*' A patient and diligent examination of the modem German cream
has satisfied me that they do not use the Great Tun now, because they
have got a digg-er one hid away somewhere. Either that is the case or
they empty the spring milkings into the mountain torrents and then skim
the Rhine all summer."

There is a museum of antiquities in the castle, and among its most
treasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected with German history.
There are hundreds of these, and their dates stretch back through many
centuries. One of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand of
a successor of Charlemagne, in the year 896. A signature made by a
htind which vanished out of this life near a thousand years ago, is a
more impressive thing than even a ruined castle. Luther's wedding
ring was shown me; also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era,
and an early bootjack. And there was a plaster cast of the head of a
man who was assassinated about sixty years ago. The stab- wounds in
the face were duplicated with unpleasant fidelity. One or two real hairs
still remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast. That trifle seemed
to almost change the counterfeit into a corpse.

There are many aged portraits, — some valuable, some worthless;
some of great interest, some of none at all. I bought a couple, — one
a gorgeous duke of the olden time, and the other a comety blue-eyed
damsel, a princess, maybe. I bought them to start a portrait gallery of
my ancestors with. I paid a dollar and a half for the duke and two
and a half for the princess. One can lay in ancestors at even cheaper
rates than these, in Europe, if he will mouse among old picture shops
and look out for chances.

THE COLLEGE PRISON

It leems that the student may break a good many of the public
laws without having to answer to the public authorities. His case
must come before the University for trial and punishment. If a police-
man catches him in an unlawful act and proceeds to arrest him, the
offender proclaims that he b a student, and perhaps shows his matricu-
lation card, whereupon the o6Scer asks for his address, then goes his
way, and reports the matter at headquarters. If the offense is one over
which the city has no jurisdiction, the authorities report the case oflkially
to the University, and give themselves no further concern about it. The
University court send for the student, listen to the evidence, and pro-
nounce judgment. The punishment usually inflicted is imprisonment in
the University prison. As I understand it, a student's case is often
tried without his being present at all. Then something like this hap-
pens: A constable in the service of the University visits the lodgings
of the said student, knocks, is invited to come in, does so, and says
politely, —

" If you please, I am here to conduct yon to prison."

**Ah," says the student, **I was not expeddng it. What have I
been doing? "

*' Two weeks ago the public peace had the honor to be disturbed by
you.'*

<*It is true; I had forgotten it. Very well; I have been com-
plained of, tried, and found guilty — is that it? "

<* Exactly. You are sentenced to two days' solitaxy confinement in
the College prison, and I am sent to fetch you."

ShuUfU, " O, I can't go to-day 1 "

Officer » ** If you please, — why ? "

Shideni, *' Because I've got an engagement."

Officer. " To-morrow, then, perhaps? "

(a84)

A Tramp Abroad 285

Student. " No, I am going to the opera, to-morrow."

Officer, " Could you come Friday? "

Student. (Reflectively.) "Let me see,— Friday— Friday. I
don't seem to have anything on hand Friday."

Officer, " Then, if you please, I will expect you on Friday."

Student. " All right, I'll come around Friday."

Cifflcer. "Thank you. Good day, sir."

S/udent. "Good day."

So on Friday the student goes to the prison of his own accord, and
is admitted.

It is questionable if the world's criminal histoiy can show a custom
more odd than this. Nobody knows, now, how it originated. There
have always been many noblemen among the students, and it is pre-
sumed that all students are gentlemen; in the old times it was usual to
mar the convenience of such folk as little as possible; perhaps this
indulgent custom owes its origin to this.

One day I was listening to some conversation upon this subject when
an American student said that for some time he had been under sentence
for a slight breach of the peace and had promised the constable that he
would presently find an unoccupied day and betake himself to prison.
I asked the young gentleman to do me the kindness to go to jail as soon
as he conveniently could, so that I might tiy to get in there and visit
him, and see what collie captivity was like. He said he would appoint
the very first day he could spare.

His confinement was to endure twenty-four hours. He shortly
chose his day, and sent me word. I started immediately. When I
reached the University Place, I saw two gentlemen talking together,
and, as they had portfolios under their arms, I judged they were tutors
or elderly students; so I asked them in English to show me the college
jail. I had learned to take it for granted that anybody in Germany who
knows anything, knows English, so I had stopped afflicting people with
my German. These gentlemen seemed a trifle amused, — and a trifle
confused, too, — but one of them said he would vralk around the comer
with me and show me the place. He asked me why I wanted to get in
there, and I said to. see a friend, — and for curiosity. He doubted if I
would be admitted, but volunteered to put in a word or two for me with
the custodian.

He rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved way
and then into a small living-room, where we were received by a hearty

286 A Tramp Abroad

and good-Datnred Gennan woman of fitly. She threw up her hands
with a smpriaed '* Ach Gott, Heir Fn>fessor! " and exhibited a mighty
deference for mj new acquaintance. By the sparkle in her eye I judged
she was a good deal amused, too. The << Heir itefessor " talked to
her in Gennan, and I understood enough of it to know that he was
bringing very plansible reasons to bear for admitting me. They were
saccessfol. So the Herr Ftofessor received my earnest thanks and
departed. The old dame got her keys, took me up two or three flights
of stairs, unlocked a door, and we stood in the presence of the criminal.
Then she went into a jolly and eager description of all that had occurred
downstairs, and what the Herr Professor had said, and so forth and so
on. Plainly, she.r^arded it as quite a superior joke that I had waylaid
a Professor and employed him in so odd a service. But I wouldn't have
done it if I had known he was a Professor; therefore my conscience
was not disturbed.

Now the dame left us to ourselves. The cell was not a roomy one;
still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell. It had a window
of good size, iron-grated; a small stove; two wooden chairs: two
oaken tables, very old and most elaborately carved with names, mottoes,
faces, armorial bearings, etc., — the work of several generations of
imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead with a villainous
old straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows, blankets, or coverlets, — for
these the student must furnish at his own cost if he wants them. There
was no carpet, of course.

The ceiling was completely covered with names, dates, and mono-
grams, done with candle smoke. The walls were thickly covered with
pictures and portraits (in profile), some done with ink, some with soot,
some with a pencil, and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and
wherever an inch or two of space had remained between the pictures,
the captives had written plaintive verses, or names and dates. I do not
think I was ever in a more elaborately frescoed apartment.

Against the wall hung a placard containing the prison laws. I made
a note of one or two of these. For instance: The prisoner must pay,
for the " privilege ** of entering, a sum equivalent to 20 cents of our
money; for the privilege of leaving, when his term has expired, 20
cents; for every day spent in the prison, 12 cents; for fire and light, 12
cents a day. The jailer furnishes coffee, mornings, for a small sum;
dinners and suppers may be ordered from outside if the prisoner
chooses, — and he is allowed to pay for them, too.

A Tramp Abroad 287

Here and there, on the walls, appeared the names of American
students, and in one place the American arms and motto were displayed
in colored chalks.

With the help of my friend I translated many of the inscriptions.
Some of them were cheerful, others the reverse. I will give the reader
a few specimens:

** In my tenth semestre (my best one), I am cast here through the
complaints of others. Let those who follow me take warning."

*' III Tage ohne Grand angeblich aus Neugierde." Which is to
say, he had a curiosity to know what prison life was like; so he made a
breach in some law and got three days for it. It is more than likely
that he never had the same curiosity again.

(^Translation,^ "E. Glinicke, four days for being too eager a
spectator of a row."

" F. Graf Bismarck, — 27-29, II, '74." Which means that Count
Bismarck, son of the great statesman, was a prisoner two days in 1874.

(Translation,) "R. Diergandt, — for Love, — 4 days." Many
people in this world have caught it heavier than that for the same
indiscretion.

This one is terse. I translate :

**Four weeks for misinUrpreied gallantry,**

I wish the sufferer had explained a little more fully. A four-weeks
term is a rather serious matter.

There were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls, to a
certain unpopular college dignitary. One sufferer had got three days
lor not saluting him. Another had << here two days slept and three
nights lain awake," on account of this same " Dr. K." In one place
was a picture of Dr. K. hanging on a gallows.

Here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time by
altering the records left by predecessors. Leaving the name standing,
and the date and length of the captivity, they had erased the descrip-
tion of the misdemeanor, and written in its place, in staring capitals,
** FOR THEFT I " or <* FOR MURDER ! " or some Other gaudy crime. In
one place, all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word:
"Rache !"♦

There was no name signed, and no date. It was an inscription well
calculated to pique curiosity. One would greatly like to know the

•"Revenge!"

288 A Tramp Abroad

nature of the wrong that had been done, and what loit of vengeance
was wanted, and whether the prisoner ever adueved it or not. But
there was no way of finding out these things.

OccasJonally, a name was followed simply by the remark, ** II days,
for disturbing the peace," and without comment upon the justice at in-
justice of the sentence.

In one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the green-cap
corps with a bottle of champagne in each hand; and below was the
legend: *< These make an evil fate endurable."

There were two prison cells, and neither had space left on walls or
ceiling f(Mr another name or portrait or picture. The inside surfaces of
the two doois were completely covered with cartes de visite of former
prisoners, ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt and
injury by glass.

I veiy much wanted one of the sorry old tables which the prisoners
had spent so many years in ornamenting with their pocket-knives, but
red tape was in the way. The custodian could not sell one without an
order from a superior; and that superior would have to get it from Ais
superior; and this one would have to get it from a higher one,— and
so on up and up until the faculty should sit on the matter and defiver
final judgment. The system was right, and nobody could find fault
with it; but it did not seem justifiable to bother so many people, so I
proceeded no further. It might have cost me more than I could afford,
anyway; for one of those prison tables, which was at that time in a
private museum in Heidelberg, was afterwards sold at auction for two
hundred and fifty dollars. It was not worth mott than a dollar, cr
possibly a dollar and a half, before the captive students began their
work on it. Persons who saw it at the auction said it was so curiously
and wonderfully carved that it was worth the money that was paid for it.

Among the many who have tasted the college prison's dreary
hospitality was a lively young fellow from one of the Southern States of
America, whose first year's experience of German university life was
rather peculiar. The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name
on the college books, and was so elated with the fact that his dearest
hope had found fruition and he was actually a student of the old and
renowned university, that he set to work that very night to cdebrate the
event by a grand laric in company with some other students. In the
course of his lark he managed to make a wide breach in one of die
university's most stringent laws. Sequel: before noon, neit day, be

A Tramp Abroad 289

was in the college prison, — booked for three months. The twdve long
weeks dragged slowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last. A
great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students received him with a ronsing
demonstration as he came forth, and of course there was another grand
lark, — in the course of which he managed to make a wide breach in
one of the ciiy*s most stringent laws. Sequel : before noon, next day,
he was safe in the city lockup, — booked for three months. This
second tedious captivity drew to an end in the course of time, and again
a great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students gave him a rousing
reception as he came forth; but his delight in his freedom was so
boundless that he could not proceed soberly and cahnly, but must go
hopping and skipping and jumping down the sleety street from sheer
excess of joy. Sequel: he slipped and broke his leg, and actually lay
in the hospital during the next three months !

When he at last became a free man again, he said he believed he
would hunt up a brisker seat of learning; the Heidelberg lectures might
be good, but the opportunities of attending them were too rare, the
educational process too slow; he said he had come to Europe with the
idea that the acquirement of an education was only a matter of time,
but if he had averaged the Heiddburg system correctly, it was rather a
matter of eternity.

!»«»

THB AWVUL GERMAN LANGUAGB
A Wtut wBKBBmD^ mkci toc traolc ipoud loo.— * Pkovcnx xxzSi 7*

I WBIT otai to look al the ooDection of cmiosities in Hdddbeig
OHtle» and one dqf I mr pf ia cd the keq)er of it with my Gennan. I
qnke cntflrd]f in that language. He was greatly interested; and after
I had talked awhile he said my German was veiy rare« possibly a
<«miqiie**; and wanted to add it to his mnsemn.

II he had known idiat it had cost me to aoqnire my art, he would
also have known that it woold break any coUector to buy it. Hanis
and I had been hard at woik on onr Gennan dnriog several weeks at
that time, and ahhong^ we had made good progress, it had been
accomplished under great difficnlty and annoyance, for three of our
teachers had died in the meantime. A person who has not studied
Genman can form no idea of what a peiplezing language it is.

Surely there is not another lai^age that is so slipshod and system-
lesB, and so dippei^ and dnsive to the grasp. One is washed about in
it, hither and hither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he
thinks he has ciq[>tured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on
amid the general rage and turmofl of the ten parts of speech, he turns
over the page and reads, " Let the pupil make careful note of the fol-
lowing excifiHams.** He runs his eye down and finds that there are
more exceptions to the rule than instances of- it. So overboard he goes
again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such
has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I
have got one of these four confusing '* cases " where I am master of it,
a seeming^ insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence,
dotfaed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground
from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird-^

(290)

A Tramp Abroad 291

(it is always inqiuring after things which are of no sort of coiisequence
to anybody) : " Where is the bird? ** Now the answer to this question,
—according to the book, — is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith
shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then
you must stick to the book. Very well, I heffn to cipher out the
German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for
that is the German idea. I say to myself, ** R^u (rain) is masculine
-—or maybe it is feminine — or possibly neuter— it is too much trouble
to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the)
Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out
to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the
hypothesis that it is masculine. Veiy well — then ^ rain is der Regen,
if it is sunply in the quiescent state of being menHoned, without enlarge-
ment or discusdon — Nominative case; but if this rain is lying ar»und,
in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it
is doif^ some^ng — that is, resHng^ (which is one of the German gram-
mar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the
Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not rest-
ing, but is doing something actively ^ — it is falling, — to interfere with
the bird, likely, — and this indicates movement, which has the effect of
sliding it into the Accusative case and changing tiem Regen into den
Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter,
I answer up confidentiy and state in German that the bird is staying in
the blacksmith shop <' wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the
teacher lets me softiy down with the remark that whenever the word
** wegen " drops into a sentence, it ahuays throws that subject into the
Genitive case, regardless of consequences — and that therefore this bird
itaid in the blacksmith shop '* wegen des Regens."

N. B. I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was
an ** exception " which permits one to say " wegen den Regen " in cer-
tain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not
extended to anything but rain.

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An
average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive
curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts
of speech — not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of com-
pound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in
any dictionary — - six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or
seam-— that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen <USerait

292 A Tramp Abroad

inbj«cU» each endoted in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there
eitra parentheses which re-eadose three or four of the minor parenthe-
scs» making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparen-
theses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of
which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in
the middle of the last line of it — after whUh comes the verb, and you
find out for the fiist time what the man has been talking about; and
after the verb — merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out,

— the writer shovels in " kaben sind gewesen gthabt haben gewcrden
tein^" or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose
that this doang hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signa-
ture — not necessaiy, but pretty. German books are easy enough to
read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your
head,— so as to reverse the construction,— but I think that to learn to
read and understand a German newspqier is a thing which must always
remain an impossibility to a foreigner.

Yet even the German books are not entirety free from attacks of the
Parenthesis distemper — though they are usually so mild as to cover
only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it
carries some mraning to your mind because you are able to remember a
good deal of what has gofke before.

Now here is a sentence from a popular and excdlent German novd,

— with a slight parenthesb in it. I will make a perfectly literal trans-
lation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the
assistance of the reader, — though in the original there are no parenthe-
sis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the
remote verb the best way he can :

" But when he, upon the street, the (in-sat!n-and-silk-covered-now-
veiy-unconstrainedly-after-the-newest-fBshion-dressed) government coun-
sellor's wife met,'* etc., etc.*

That is from << The Old Mamsdle's Secret," by Mrs. Marlitt. And
that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model.
You observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations;
wells in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next
page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along on exdting
preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry

* Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt nnd Seide gehullten
jets sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode geklddeten Reg^erungsrathin
b^egnet."

i

A Tramp Abroad 293

and have to go to press without gettmg to the verb at all. Of oomse,
then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state.

We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may
see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is
the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, where-
as with the Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen
and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fc^ which stands
for clearness among these people. For surely it is not clearness, — it
necessarily can't be clearness. Even a juiy would have penetration
enough to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a good deal confused,
a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts out to say that a
man met a counsellor's wife in the street, and then right in the midst of
this so simple undertaking halts these approaching people and makes
them stand still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress.
That is manifestly absurd. It reminds a person of those dentists who
secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on
it with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through a tedious
anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature
and dentistiy are in bad taste.

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by
splitting a verb in two and puttmg half of it at the beginning of an excit-
ing chapter and the other halfdX. the end of it. Can any one conceive
of anything more confusing than that? These things are called " separ-
able verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with separable
verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart,
the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A
favorite one is reUte a6, — which means departed. Here is an example
which I culled from a novel and reduced to English :

" The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and
sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who,
dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample
folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still
pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to
lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom
she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED."

However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs.
One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject*
and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it.
Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language.

294 A Tramp Abroad

and iboald have been left oat. For instance, the same sound, a^,
meant /Mi, and it means ski, and it means Aer, and it means i/, and it
means M47, and it means M«w. Think of the ragged poverty of a lan-
guage which has to make one word do the work of six, — and a poor
little weak thing of only three letters at that. But nudnly, think of the
ensperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is
trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says a^ to me,
I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where sfanplidty
would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the in-
ventor of this language complicated it all he could. When we wish to
speak of our ** good friend or friends," in our enliglitened tongue, we
stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard leeHng about It; but
with the German tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands
on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on dfclining it until the com-
mon sense is all declined out of it. It is as bad as Lathi. He says* for
instances

SINCSOLAR.

A/bmimUiv* ^M^n gater FVeund, my good friend.
Gmiiivf — Mein«r guiim FVeundix, of my good friend.
Dativi — MeinMw gut/M FVeundy to my good friend.
AccusaHvt^ Mein#ii gut^n Freund, my good friend.

PLURAL.

N. — Mein# gutm Freund/, my good friends.

G.— Mein#r gttt#M Freund/, of my good friends.

D. — ULtsxun gut/M Freund/n, to my good friendi.

A. — Mein/ gutM Freund/, my good friends.

Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memoiixe those varia-
tions, and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go with-
out friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them. I have
shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is
only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the
adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another
when the object is neuter. Now there are more adjectives in this Ian*
guage than there are black cats in Svritcerland, and they must aU be as
elaborately declined as, the examples above suggested. DiflScult? —
troublesome?— these words cannot describe it. I heard a Calilomian
student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would
rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

A Tramp Abroad 295

The inTentor of the language seems to- have taken pleasure in com-
plicating it in eveiy way he could think of. For instance, if one Is cas-
ually referring to a house, Haus^ or a horse, Pferd^ or a dog, Hund^ he
spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them in
the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessaiy / and spells
them Hause, Pferde, Hunde. So, as an added / often signifies the
plural, as the ^ does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a
month making twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mis*
take; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford
loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them,
because he ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he
really supposed he was talking plural, — which left the law on the seller's
side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for
recoveiy could not lie.

In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a
good idea; and a good idea, in this language. Is necessarily conspicuous
from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitaliang of nouns a good
idea, because by reason of it yon are almost always able to tell a noun
the nnnute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you
mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good
deal of time tiying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost
always do mean something, and this helps to deceive the student. I
translated a passage one day, which said that " the infuriated tigress
broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir-forest '* ( Taunemtfolcf),
"When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannen-
wald in this instance, was a man's name.

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the
distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by
heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory
like a memorandum book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while
a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the
turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in
print — I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the
German Sunday-school books:

** Gretchen* Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

« WWulm, She has gone to the kitchen.

** Gretchen, Where is the accomplished and bc a ntiftil English
maiden?

« WUhiim. It has gone to the openu"

296 A Tramp Abroad

To continae with the German genders: a tree is nuJe, Its bads are
fenude, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs.aie male, cats are
female, — Tom-cats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck,
bosom, elbows, fingers, naib, feet, and bodjr, are of the male sex, and
his head b male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it,
and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it, — for in
Germany aU the women wear either male heads ot sexless ones; a per*
son's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, hips, and toes are of the
female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and con-
science, haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably
got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.

Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a
man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter
closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he
is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself
with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as
being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly
remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or
cow in the land.

In the German it is true that by some overaght of the inventor of
the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife ( IViib) is not,—
which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so,
according to the grammar, a fish is A^, his scales are she^ but a fishwife
is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-descrip-
tion; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A
German speaks of an Englishman as the Engldnder ; to change the
sex, he adds inn^ and that stands for Englishwoman, — Englanderinn,
That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a
German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that
the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: *'*die
Engl^dertffif," — which means "the sh^'Englishwoman" I con-
sider that that person is ov^-described.

Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of
nouns, he is still in a difiiculty, because he finds it impossible to per-
suade his tongue to refer to things as << A^ " and << jA/," and « kirn "
and ** her,** which it has been alwajrs accustomed to refer to as ** f/."
When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, with the hims
and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the
utterance-point, it is no use,— the moment he begins to speak his

A Tramp Abroad 297

tongue flies the track and all those labored males and females come out
as " its.** And even when he is reading German to himself, he always
calls those things " it*\ whereas he ought to read in this way:

Tale of the Fishwife and Its Sad Fate ♦

It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how
he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and oh the Mud,
how deep he is ! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire ; it
has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the
Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatiures; and one Scale has even
got into its Eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry
for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the
raging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes
and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites of! a Fin, she holds
her in her Mouth, — will she swallow her ? No, the Fishwife's brave
Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin, — which he eats,
himself, as his Reward. O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-
basket; he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the doomed
Uten^ with her red and angiy Tongue; now she attacks the helpless
Fishwife's Foot, — she bums him up, all but the big Toe, and even she
is partly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fieiy
Tongues; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys it; she attacks
its Hand and destroys her ; she attacks its poor worn Garment and
destrojTS her also; she attacks its Body and consumes him; she
wreathes herself about its Heart and it is consumed; next about its
Breast, and in a Moment she is a Cinder; now she reaches its Neck,
— he goes; now its Chin, — it goes; now its Nose, — she goes. In
another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more.
Time presses, — ^is there none to succor and save? Yes ! Joy, joy, with
flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes ! But alas, the generous she-
Female is too late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceased
from its Sufferings, it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it for
its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smouldering Ash-heap. Ah,
woful, woful Ash-heap I Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon
the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that
when he rises again it will be in a Realm where he will have one good

*I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and ancient English)
fashion^

298 A Tramp Abroad

•qotie respoDsiUe Sex, and hsve it all to hhnsdf , instead of having a
r lot of aaoited Sexes icattered all over him in ^xits.

There, now, the reader can tee for hhnself that this pronoim bud-
neM is a veiy awkward thing for the imaociistoaied tongue.

I suppose that m all langnages the siinilarides of look and sound
between words which have no stmilarity in meaning are a fruitfiil source
of perplexity to the foreigner. It is so in our tongue, and it is notably
the case m the German. Now there is that troublesome word vermdhit:
to me it has so close a resemblance,— either real or fancied, — to three
or four other words, that I never know whether it means despised,
painted, suspected, or married; until I look in the dictionary, and then
I find it means the latter. There are lots of such words and they are a
great torment. To increase the difficulty there are words which seem to
resemble each other, and yet do not; but they make just as much
trouble as if they did. For instance, there is the word vermiethen (to
let, to lease, to hire); and the word tferkeirathen (another way of say-
ing to many^ I heard of an Bnglishman who knocked at a man's
door in Heiddbeig and proposed, in the best German he could com-
mand, to " verheirathen " that house. Then there are some words
which mean one thing when you emphasize the first syllable, but mean
something veiy different if jrou throw the emphasis on the last syllable.
For instance, there is a word which means a runaway, or the act of
glancing through a book, according to the placing of the emphasis; and
another word which signifies to associate with a man, or to avoid him,
according to where you put the emphasis, — and you can generally
depend on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble.

There are some exceeding^ useful words in this language. Schiagt
for example; and Zug, There are three-quarters of a column of Schlags
in the dictionaiy, and a column and a half of Zugs. The word Schlag
means Blow, Stroke, Dash, Hit, Shock, Clap, Slap, Time, Bar, Coin,
Stamp, Kind, Sort, Manner, Way, Apopleiiy, Wood-Cutting, Enclosure,
Field, Forest-Qearing. This is its simple and exact meaning, — that is
to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning; but there are ways by which
you can set it free, so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the
momii^, and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please to
its tail, and make it mean anything you want to. You can begin with
Schla^-ader^ which means artery, and you can hang on the whole

A Tramp Abroad 299

dictionaiy, word by word, clear through the alphabet to Scklag-wasser^
which means bilge-water, — and including Sckhg-mutter^ which means
mother-in-law.

Just the same with Zug, Strictly speaking, Zug means Pull, Tug,
Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition,
Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, That of Char-
acter, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, 0]^[an-stop, Team, Whiff,
Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing which
it does not mean, — when all its legitimate pendants have been hung on,
has not been discovered yet.

One cannot over-estimate the usefulness of Schlag and Zug. Armed
just with these two, and the word Also^ what cannot the foreigner dn
German soil accomplish? The German word Also\s the equivalent of
the English phrase " You know," and does not mean anything at all,-^
in talk, though it sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens
his mouth an Also falls out; and eveiy time he shuts it he bites one in
two that was tiying to get out.

Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words, is master
of the situation. Let him talk right along, fearlessly; let him pour his
indifferent Gennan forth, and when he lacks for a word, let him heave
a Schlag into the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug,
but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a Zug after it; the two together
can hardly fell to bung the hole; but if, by a miracle, they should fail,
let him simply say Also ! and this will give him a moment's chance to
think of the needful word. In Germany, when you load your conversa-
tional gun it is always best to throw in a Schlag or two and a Zug or
two, because it doesn't make any difference how much the rest of the
charge may scatter, you are bound to bag something with them. Then
you blandly say Also, and load up again. Nothing gives such an air of
grace and elegance and unconstraint to a German or an English con-
versation as to scatter it full of " Also's '* or " You-knows."

In my note-book I fmd this entry:

July I. — In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables was
successfully removed from a patient, — ^a North-German from near Ham-
burg; but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the
wrong place, under the impression that he contained a panorama, he
died. The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community.

That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the
most curious and notable features of my subject, — the length of German

500 A Tramp Abroad

vofdk Some German wovdi are to long that tfaejhaiFe a pcflqpedi^
Ofaterre thoe examples:
Freondichaftibewigimgen*

Stafltveroionetep?eiBammlPngen«

These things aie not wotds, they are alphabetical precessions. And
they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper any time and see
than marehing majesticalfy across the page, — and if he has any imagin-
ation he can see the banners and hear the mnsicy too. They impart a
martial thrill to the meekest sabject. I tal^e a great interest in these
curiosities. Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in
my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection.
When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus
increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I
lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac
hunter:

Genkralstaatsybeokdnehenvbesammlungen.

Altssthumswissenschaftkn.

kindrsbbwahrctngsanctaltbn.

Unabhaengigkbxtsbrklasrungbn.

wlkdbekrstkllungsbbstrkbungbn.

Waffenstillstandsuntbrhandlungbn,

Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching
across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape,
—but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it
blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or ttmnd
through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no
help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere, — so.it
leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things
are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and
the inventor of them ought to have been killed. They are compound
words with the hyphens left out. The various words used in building
them are in the dictionary, but in a very scattered condition; so you can
hunt the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning at last, but
it is a tedious and harassing business. I have tried this process upon
some of the above examples. " Freundschaftsbeseigungen " seems to
be ** Friendship demonstrations»" which is only a foolish and clumsy
way of saying « demonstrations of friendship." ** Unabhaengigkeitser-
Idaerungen " seems to be " Independencededarations," which is no

A Tramp Abroad 301

fanpxovcment upon "Declarations of Independence/' so far as I can
see. ** Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen " seems to be "Gen-
eralstatesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as I can get at it, — a mere
rhythmical, gushy euphuism for "meetings of the legislature," I judge.
We used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature, but
it has gone out now. We used to speak of a thing as a " never-to-be-
forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping it into the simple and
sufficient word " memorable " and then going calmly about our business
as if nothing had happened. In those days we were not content to
embalm the thing and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monument
over it.

But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to the
present day, but with the hyphens left out, in the German fashion.
This is the shape it takes: instead of saying " Mr. Simmons, clerk of
the county and district courts, v^as in town yesterday," the new form
puts it thus: " Qerk of the County and District Court Simmons was in
town yesterday." This saves neither time nor ink, and has an awkward
sound besides. One often sees a remark like this in our papers:" Mrs.
Assistant District Attorney Johnson returned to her city residence yes-
terday for the season." That is a case of really unjustifiable compound-
ing; because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers a title on
Mrs. Johnson which she has no right to. But these little instances are
trifles indeed, contrasted with the ponderous and dismal German system
of piling jumbled compounds together. I wish to submit the following
local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of Ulustration :

"In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno' clock Night, the
inthistownstandingtavem called < The Wagoner ' was downbumt. When
the fire to the onthedownbuminghouseresting Stork's Nest reached, flew
the parent Storks away. But when the bytheraging, firesurrounded Nest
itielf caught Fire, straightway plunged the quickretuming Mother Stork
into the Flames and died, her Wings over her young ones outspread."

Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to take the
pathos out of that picture, — indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it.
This item is dated away back yonder months ago. I could have used it
sooner, but I was waiting to hear from the Father-Stork. I am still
waiting.

**Alsot** If I have not shown that the German is a difficult lan-
guage, I have at least intended to do it. I have heard of an American
student who was asJced how he was getting along with his German, and

502 A Tramp Abroad

prampdjx **Iam not gettiof along at all. I have
voriEed at k haid for three levd mcmths, and all I have got to show for
it k one aoiitaiy Gennan phiaie,— « ZiMtf ^%*** (two glasses of
beer). He panaed a moment, reflectively ; then added with feeling :
«« But I've got that M&//»*

And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing and in-
faiating itndf , nqr eiecntion has been at fault, and not my intent. I
heard latefy of a wom and soidy-tried American student who used to
fly to a certain German word f6r relief when he could bear up under
his aggravations no longer, — the only word in the whole language
iHioae aonnd was sweet and predoos to his ear and healing to his lacer-
ated] apint. Thb waa the word Damii. It was only the saundibal
hdped him, not the meaning;* and so, at last, when he learned that
the emphaiif was not on the first syllable, his onl^ stay and support waa
gone, and he faded away and died.

I tUnk that a description of any loud, atining, tmnoltooos episode
must be tamer in Gennan than in English. Our descriptive words of
this character have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, whfle their
German equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energylesa. Boom,
burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, eiplosion; howl, ay,
shout, yen, groan; batde, hdl. These are magnificent words; they
have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they
describe. But their Gennan equivalents would be ever ao nice to ang
the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for
display and not for superior usefulness in analyzing sounds. Would any
man want to die in a battle which was called by so tame a term as a
SchJachif Or would not a consumptive fed too much bundled up, who
was about to go out, in a shirt collar and a seal ring, into a storm which
the bird-song word GewiiUr was employed to describe? And observe
the strongest of the several Gennan equivalents for explosion, — Am-
bruch. Our word Toothbrush is more powerful than that. It seems to
me that the Gennans could do worse than import it into their language
to describe particulaify tremendous explosions with. The German word
for hell, — Hdlle, — sounds more like helfy than «n jrthing else ; there-
fore, how necessarily chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a
man were told in Gennan to go there, could he really rise to the dignity
of feeling insulted?

* It merely means, in its general sense, " kereunik.**

A Tramp Abroad 503

Having now pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language,
I now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues.
The capitalizing of the nouns I have ahready mentioned. But far before
this virtue stands another, — that of spelling a word according to the
sound of it. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student caa
tell how any German word is pronounced without having to ask;
whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us, <*What
does B, O, W, spell? " we should be obliged to reply, « Nobody can
tell what it spells when you set it off by itself ; you can only tell by
referring to the context and finding out what it signifies, — whether it is
a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of one's head, or the forward
end of a boot."

There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully
effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and
affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all
forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the pass-
ing stranger^ clear up to courtship ; those which deal with outdoor
Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects, — with meadows and forests,
and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the
moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with
any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also which deal
with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in
those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and
effective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the
language cry. That shows that the sound of the words is correct, — it
interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is
informed, and through the ear, the heart.

The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is
the right one. They repeat it several times, if they choose. That is
wise. But in English, when we have used a word a couple of times in
a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are
w^ik enough to exchange it for some other word which only approxi-
mates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish.
Rq>etition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse.

There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble
to point out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandly
about their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kin4

504 A Tramp Abroad

of a peaoD. I have ihown that the Gcrmaa hmgnage needs refonning.
Vttf wdl, I am leadf to lefoini it. At leait I am leadf to make the
proper nggeiliooa. Socfa a cooiie as this might be immodrst in an-
other; but I have devoted upwards of nine lull weeks, first and last, to
a carelnl and critical stndf of this tongue, and thus have acquired a
confidence in my ability to reform it which no mere si^wrfidal culture
oould have conferred upon me*

In the fint place, I would leave out the Dative Case. It confuses
the plurals ; and, besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the Dative
Gue, escept he discover it by acxident, — and then he does not know
when or where it was that he got into it, or bow long he has been in it,
or how he is ever going to get out of it again. The Dative Case is but
an oinamental folly, — it is better to discard it*

In the next place, I would move the Verb further up to the front.
You may load up with ever so good a Verb, but I notice that you never
really bring down a subject with it at the present German range, — you
only cripple it. So I insist that this important part of speech should be
brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with the
naked eye.

Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue,
— to swear with, and also to use in describing all' sorts of vigorous
things in a vigorous way.*

Fourthly, I would reoiganiae the sexes, and distribute them accord-
ing to the will of the Creator. This as a tribute of respect, if nothing
else.

Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words ;

* <* yierdamifi/^** and its variations and enlargements, are words
which have plenty of meaning, but the sounds are so mild and in-
effectual that German ladies can use them without sin. German ladies
who could not be induced to commit a sin by any persuasion or com-
pulsion, promptly rip out one of these harmless little words when they
tear their dresses or don't like the soup. It sounds about as wicked as
our *<My gracious." German ladies are constantly saying, "Achl
GottI" "MdnGott!" "Gott in Himmd!" "Herr Gott!" " Der
Herr Jesus 1 '* etc. They think our ladies have the same custom, per-
haps ; for I once heard a gentle and lovely old German bufy say to a
sweet young American girl : '* The two languages are so alike — how
pleasant that is ; we say < Ach ! Gott 1 ' you say < Goddam.^ "

A Tramp Abroad 505

or require' the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions for
refreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas
are more easily received and digested when they come one at a time
than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other ; it is
pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a
shovel.

Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and not
hang a string of those useless "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben
geworden seins" to the end of his oration. This sort of gew-gaws
undignify a speech, instead of adding a grace. They are, therefore, an
offense, and should be discarded.

Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the re-parenthesis,
the re-re-parenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-re-parentheses, and likewise
the final wide-reaching all-enclo»ng King-parenthesis. I would require
every individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward
tale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. Infractions of this
law should be punishable with death.

And eighthly and last, I would retain Zng and Schlag^ with their
pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulazy. This would simplify
the language.

I have now named what I regard as the most necessary and impor-
tant changes. These are perhaps all I could be expected to name for
nothing ; but there are other suggestions which I can and wUl make in
case my proposed application shall result in my being fbrmally employed
by the govenmient in the work of reforming the language.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought
to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours,
French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest,
then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If
it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside
among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

A Fourth of July Oration in the German Tongue, deliverbd
AT A Banquet of the Anglo-American Club of Students
BY THE Author of this Book.

Gentlemen: Since I arrived, a month ago, in this old wonderland*
this vast garden of Germany, my English tongue has so often proved a
useless piece of baggage to me, and so troublesome to cany around, ia
20««

)06 A Tramp Abroad

a oooDliy vlwn tfaej hcven't the cbecldiig sjrrtem for higgage, tbat I
final^ tet to voA, lait wedc, and leanied the Gennan Iiagoag^ Alsol
El frcot mich dsM dies to iit, denn et muss, in ein hanpts&chlich degree^
hoffich aein, dsM man anf ein occasion like this* sein Rede in die
Spiacbe des Landes worin he boaxds, aussprecfaen soD. Daf Or habe ich,
ans leiiiiacbe Veilegenheit, — no» Vergangenheit. — no, I mean Hdf«
lichkeity^aiis leiniache Hoflichkeit habe icfa resolved to tackle this
boancM in the German language* mn Gottes willen 1 Alsol SiemOssen
so freondlich sefai, nnd Terzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwd
Eng U sc h cr Woite, hie xood da* denn ich finde dass die deatsche is not a
yntf oopkxm language* and so iHien yoa've really got anything to sty,
you'ie got to dimw on a Isngnage that can stand the strain.

Wenn aber man kann nicht meinem Rede verstehen* so werde ich
ihm spAter dassdbe aberBetz, wenn er solche Dienst verlangen wbUen
habenwerdensoDenseinhitte. (I don't know what woDenhabenwerden
•oOcn sein hitte means* but I nbtice thty always pot it at the end of a
German sentence — merely for general literaiy goigeoiisness, I sup-
pose.)

This is a great and justly honored day, — a day which is worthy of
the veneiation in which it is hdd by the true patriots of all climes and
nationalitifa* — a day which offers a fmitfnl theme for thought and
speech; md memem F^emde* — no, mdnMi FremdMi,— -iiiefai«r Fnxm-
dest — wdl* take your choice* they're all the same price; I don't know
which one is right, — alsol ich habe gehabt haben worden gewesen
sein* as Goethe says in his Paradise Lost,— ich,— ich,— that is to say*
—ich* — bat let us change cars.

Also t Die Anblick so vide Grossbrittanischer mid Amerikanischer
hier zosammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist awar a welcome and
inspiriting q;>ectade. And what has moved you to it? Can the terse
German tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? Is it Freund-
schaftsbezeigungenstadtverordnetenversammlungenfamiliendgenthttm-
lichkdten? Nein, o nein ! This is a crisp and noUe word, but it fails
to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly
meeting and produced diese Anblick, — eine Anblick wdche ist gut zu
sehen, — gut far die Augen in a fordgn land and a far countiy,— eine
Anblick solche als in die gewOhnliche Hdddberger phrase nennt man dn
•< sdiOnes Aussicht I " }a, freilich natttrlich wahischeinlich ebensowohl !
Also ! Die Aussicht auf dem K5nigsstuhl mehr grOsserer ist, aber geist-
liscbe iprechend nicht so schOn, lob' GottI Because sie sind hier

A Tramp Abroad 307

zusammengetxoffen, in Braderlichem concord, ein grossen Tag zu feiern,
whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality only, but
have conferred a measure of good upon all lands that know liberty
to-day, and love it. Hundert Jahre vorUber, waren die Engl&nder und
die Amerikaner Feinde ; aber heute sind sie herzUchen Freunde, Gott
sd Dank ! May this good fellowship endure ; may these banners here
blended in amity so remain ; may they never any more wave over oppos-
ing hosts, or be stained with blood which was kindred, is kindred, and
always will be kindred, until a line drawn upon a map shall be able to
say: " Tkis bars the ancestral blood from flowing in the vdns of the
tl"

«"••

LEGEND OF THE CASTLES

CALLED TBB **SWALLOW*S NBST*' AND «THB BKOTHKKS,'* AS GQN-
DBCSID nOM THB CAPTAIN'S TALB

In the ne^bboriiood of three hundred yeeis ago the SwaDow's Nest
and the laiger castle between it and Neckaisteinach were owned and
occnpied by two old knights who were twin brothers, and bachelors.
They had no relatives. They were very rich. They had fought through
the wars and retired to private life — covered with honorable scars.
They were honest, hcmorable men in their dealings, but the people had
given them a couple of nicknames which were very suggestive, — Herr
Givenanght and Herr Heartless. The old knights were so proud of
these names that if a burgher called them by their right ones they
would correct them.

The most renowned scholar in Europe, at that time, was the Herr
Doctor Franz Reikmann, who lived in Hddelberg. All Germany was
proud of the venerable scholar, who lived in the simplest way, for great
scholars are always poor. He was poor, as to money, but very rich in
his sweet young daughter Hild^arde and his library. He had been all
his life collecting his library, book by book, and he loved it as a miser
loves his hoarded gold. He said the two strings of his heart were
rooted, the one in his daughter, the other in his books ; and that if
either were severed he must die. Now in an evil hour, hoping to win a
marriage portion for his child, this simple old man had entrusted his
small savings to a sharper to be ventured in a glittering speculation.
But that was not the worst of it : he signed a paper, — without reading
it. That is the way with poets and scholars ; they always sign virithout
reading. This cuzming paper made him responsible for heaps of things.

(308)

A Tramp Abroad 309

The result was that one night he found himself in debt to the sharper
eight thousand pieces of gold ! — an amount so prodigious that it simply
stupefied him to think of it. It was a night of woe in that house,

<< I must part with my library, — I have nothing else. So perishes
one heartstring," said the old man.

« What will it bring, father? " asked the girl.

<< Nothing I It is worth seven hundred pieces of gold; but by auc-
tion it will go for little or nothing."

<* Then you will have parted with the half of youi heart and the joy
of your life to no purpose, since so mighty a burden of debt will remain
behind."

'< There is no help for it, my child. Our darlings must pass under
the hammer. We must pay what we can,"

*' My father, I have a feeling that the dear Virgin will come to our
help. Let us not lose heart."

" She cannot devise a miracle that will turn nothin§r into eight thou-
sand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring us little peace."

« She can do even greater things, my father. She will save us, I
know she will."

Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep in his
chair where he had been sitting before his books as one who watches by
his beloved dead and prints the features on his memory for a solace in
the aftertime of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room
and gently woke him, saying, —

'< My presentiment was true ! She will save us. Three times has
she appeared to me in my dreams, and said, ' Go to the Herr Give-
naught, go to the Herr Heartless, ask them to come and bid. There,
did I not tell you she would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin ! "

Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh.

" Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles st&d upon
as to the harder ones that lie in those men's breasts, my child. They
bid on books writ in the learned tongues ! — they can scarce read their
own."

But Hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken. Bright and early
she was on her way up the Neckar road, as joyous as a bird.

Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having an
early breakfast in the former's castle, — the Sparrow's Nest, — and
flavoring it with a quarrel; for although these twins bore a love for each
other which almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon

310 A Tramp Abroad

which they oonld not touch without calling each other hard names,—
and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon.

*< I tell you," said Givenaught, **yoa will beggar yourself yet witb
yonr insane squanderings of monqr upon what you choose to consider
poor and worthy objects. All these years I have implored you to stop
tUs foolish custom and husband yonr means, but all in vain. You are
always lying to me about these secret benevolences, but you never have
managed to deceive me yet. Every time a poor devil has been set upon
his feet I have detected your hand in it — incorrigible assl "

" Eveiy time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, you mean.
Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a
docen. The idea of yomr swelling around the countiy and petting
yourself with the nickname of Givenaught, — intolerable humbug 1
Before I would be such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off.
Your life is a continual lie. But go on, I have tried my best to save you
from beggaring yourself by your riotous charities, — now for the thou-
sandth time I wash my hands of the consequences. A maundering old
fool ! that's what you are."

"And you a blethering old idiot! " roared Givenaught, ^ringing
up.

'* I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy
than to call me such names. Mannerless swine ! "

So saying, Herr HearUess sprang up in a passion. But some lucky
accident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the daily quar-
rel ended in the customary daily loving reconciliation. The gray-headed
old eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartiess walked off to his own castle.

Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence of Herr
Givenaught. He heard her story, and said, —

'* I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor, I care notfaiog
for bookish rubbish, I shall not be there."

He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor Hilde-
garde's heart, nevertheless. When she was gone the old heart-breaker
muttered, rubbing his hands, —

*< It was a good stroke. I have saved my brother's pocket this time,
in spite of him. Nothing else would have prevented his rushing off to
rescue the old scholar, the pride of Germany, from his troubles. The
poor child won't venture near Aim after the rebuff she has received from
his brother the Givenaught."

But he was mistaken. The Virgin had commanded, and Hild^arde

A Tramp Abroad 31 1

would obey. She went to Henr Heartless and told her stoiy. But he

said coldly,—

<* I am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me. I wish

you wdl, but I shall not come." •

"When Hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said, —

** How my fod of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would rage if

he knew bow cunningly I have saved his pocket. How he would have

flown to the old man's rescue 1 But the girl won't venture near him

When Hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she had
prospered. She said, —

"The "Virffn has promised, and she will keep her word; but not in
the way I thought. She knows her own ways, and they are best."

The old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting smile,
but he honored her for her brave faith, nevertheless.

Neict day the people assembled in the great hall of the Ritter tavern,
to witness the auction, — for the proprietor had said the treasure of Ger-
many's most honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place.
Hildegarde and her father sat close to the books, silent and sorrowful,
and holding each other's hands. There was a great crowd of people
present. The bidding bq;an, —

" How much for this predons libiaiy, ]ast as it stands, all com*
plete? " called the auctioneer.

" Fifty pieces of goldl *'

"A hundred I"

"Two hundred I"

"Threel"

"Four!

"Rve hundred I"

"Five twenty-five I

A brief pause.

"Five forty I"

A longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his perwittrfoni.

"Five forty-five!"

A heavy drag — the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded, fanplored,— it
was useless, eveiybody remained silent,—

' ' Well, then, — going, going, — one,— two,— **

312 A Tramp Abroad

"Five hmidied and fifty ! >>

This in a thrill voice, from a bent old man, all hmig with rags, and
with a green patch over his left eye. Eveiybody in his vicinity ttumed
and gazed at him. It was Qvenaught in disgnise. He was using a
disguised voice, too.

" Good I " cried the auctioneer. *' Going, going,— one, — two,— '*

** Five hundred and sixty 1 "

This, in a deep harsh voice, from the midst of the crowd at the other
end of the room. The people near by turned, and saw an old man, in
a strange costume, supporting himself on crutches. He wore a long
white beard, and blue spectacles. It was Herr Heartless, in disguise,
and using a disguised voice.

* < Good again ! Going, going,— one,-* "

••Six hundred I"

Sensation. The crowd raised a cheer, and some one cried out,
•• Go it. Green-patch ! " This tickled the audience and a score of
voices shouted, •• Go it. Green-patch 1 "

•• Going,— going, — going,— third and last call, — one, — two, — "

••Seven hundred!"

•• Huzzah I — well done. Crutches!" cried a vmce. The crowd
took it up, and shouted altogether, •• Wdl done. Crutches I "

••Splendid, gentlemen! you are doing magnificently. Going,
going,— "

••A thousand!"

•• Three cheers for Green-patch I Up and at him. Crutches! "

*• Going,— going, — "

••Two thousand!"

And while the people cheered and shouted, •• Crutches " muttered,
•• Who can this devil be that is fighting so to get these useless books? —
But no matter, he shan't have them. The pride of Germany shall have
his books if it beggars me to buy them for lum."

*• Going, going, going,— "

«« Three thousand!"

*• Come, everybody — give a rouser for Green-patch I "

And while they did it, ••Green-patch" muttered, ''This cripple
is plainly a lunatic; but the old scholar shall have his books, neveithe-
less, though my pocket sweat for it."

••Going,- going,— "

** Four thousand 1 "

A Tramp Abroad 313

"Huzsal*

"Five thousand I"

" Huzza 1"

"Six thousand I"

"Huzza!"

** Seven thousand I *'

"Huzza!"

"JEi^ thousand I"

"We are saved, father 1 I told you the Holy Virgin would keep
her word I" "Blessed be her sacred name!" said the old scholar,
with emotion. The crowd roared, "Huzza, huzza, huzza, — at him
again, Green-patch I "

" Going,— going,— "

" Tbn thousand 1 " As Givenaught shouted this, his excitement was
so great that he forgot himself and used his natural voice. His brother
recognized it, and muttered, under cover of the storm of cheers, —

" Aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? Take the books,
I know what you'll do with them ! "

So saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was at an end.
Givenaught shouldered his way to Hildegarde, whispered a word in her
ear, and then he also vanished. The old scholar aiid his daughter em-
braced, and the former said, "Truly the Holy Mother has done more
than she promised, child, for she has given you a splendid marriage por-
tion, — think of it, two thousand pieces of gold ! "

"And more still," cried Hildegarde, " for she has given you back
your books; the stranger whispered me that he would none of them, —
*the honored son of Germany must kefep them,' so he said. I would I
might have asked his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing;
but he was Our Lady's angel, and it is not meet that we of earth should
venture speech with them that dwell above."

GBRMAN JOURNALS

Turn dnD^r JouiiMh of Hambuig, PVankloit, Btden, Monicb, and
AuethaifHeaUcoQstnictcd on the same general plan. I speak of these
beoanst I am more famihar with them than with any other German
papen. They contain no ** editorials" whatever; no <* peisonals,*'—
and this is rather a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph
cohmm; no police court reports; no reports of proceedmgs of higher
courts; no information about priae fights or odier dog 6ght8, horse
noes, waUung matches, yachting contests, rifle matches, or other sport-
ing matters of any aoit; no reports of banquet-speeches; no department
of curious odds and ends of floating fact and goarip; no '* rumors "
about anything or anybody; no prognostications or prophecies about
anything or anybody; no Usts of patents granted or sought, or any ref-
erence to such things; no abuse erf public officials, big or little, or com-
plaints against them, or praises of them; no religious columns Satur-
days, no rehash of cold sermons Mondays; no *' weather indications ";
no ** local item " unveilings of what is happening in town, — nothing of
a local nature, indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some
prince, or the proposed meeting of some deliberatiTe bo<fy.

After so formidable a list of what one can't find in a German daily,
the question may well be asked, What can be found in it ? It is easily
answered: A child's handful of telegrams, mainly about European
national and international political moyements; letter-correspondence
about the same things; market reports. There you have it That is
what a German daUy is made of. A German daily is the slowest and
saddest and dreariest of the inventions of man. Our own dailies infuri-
ate the reader, pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him.
Once a week the German daily of the highest dass lightens up its heavy

(314)

A Tramp Abroad 315

columns, — that is, it thinks it lightens them up, — with a profound, an
abysmal, book criticism; a criticism which carries you down, down,
down into the scientific bowels of the subject, — for the German critic is
nothing if not scientific, — and when you come up at last and scent the
fresh air and see the bonny daylight OQce more, you resolve without a
dissenting voice that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up a
German daily. Sometimes, in place of the criticism, the first-dass daily
gives you what it thinks is a gay and chipper essay, — about ancient
Grecian funeral customs, or the ancient Eg^tian method of tarring a
mummy, or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples who
existed before the flood did not approve of cats. These are not un-
pleasant subjects; they are not uninteresting subjects; they are even
exciting subjects, — until one of these massive scientists gets hold of
them. He soon convinces you that even these matters can be handled
in such a way as to make a person low-spirited.

As I have said, the average German daily is made up solely of cor-
respondence, — a trifle of it by tel^;raph, the rest of it by mail. Every
paragraph has the side-head, "London," "Vienna," or some other
town, and a date. And always, before the name of the town, is placed
a letter or a sign, to indicate who the correspondent is, so that the
authorities can find him when they want to hang him. Stars, crosses,
triangles, squares, half -moons, suns, — such are some of the signs used
by correspondents.

Some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly. For instance,
my Heidelberg daily was always twenty-four hours old when it arrived
at the hotel ; but one of my Munich evening papers used to come a full
twenty-four hours before it was due.

Some of the less important dailies give one a taUespoonful of a con-
tinued story every day ; it is strung across the bottom of the page, in
the French fashion. By subscribing for the paper for five years I judge
that a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story.

If you ask a citizen of Munich which is the best Munich dafly jour-
nal, he will always tell you that there is only one good Munich daily,
and that it is published in Augsburg, forty or fifty miles away. It is
like saying that the best daily paper in New York is published out in
New Jersey somewhere. Yes, the Augsburg Al^emeiiu Zeiiung is
" the best Munich paper," and it is the one I had in my mind when I
was describing a " first-dass German daily " above. The entire paper,
opened out, is not quite as large as a single page of the New York

316 A Tramp Abroad

Htrald. It ii printed on both sides, of oouxse ; but in sach large type
that its entire contents could be put, in Herald t]rpe, upon a single page
of the Herald^ — and there would still be room enough on the page for
the ZtUmit^t *' supplement " and some portiim of the Zeiiut^s next
day's contents.

Such is the first-dass daily. The dailies actually printed in Munich
are all called seoond-dass by the public. If you ask which is the best
of these second-class papers they say there is no difference ; one is as
good as another. I have preserved a copy of one of them ; it is called
the Manchener TageS'Afueiger^ and bears date January 25, 1879.
Comparisons are odious, but they need not be malicious ; and without
any malice I wish to compare this journal, published in a German city
of 170,000 inhabitants, with journals of other countries. I know of no
other way to enable the reader to <' size " the thing.

A column of an average daily paper in America contains from 1,800
to 2,500 words ; the reading matter in a single issue consists of from
25,000 to 50,000 words. The reading matter in my copy of the Munich
journal consists of a total of 1,654 words, — for I counted them. That
would be nearly a column of one of our dailies. A single issue of the
bulkiest daily newspaper in the world — the London Times — often
contains 100,000 words of reading matter. Considering that the Daily
Anteiger issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading
matter in a single number of the London Times would keep it in
« copy ** two months and a half I

The Anteiger is an eight-page paper; its page is one inch wider and
one inch longer than a foolscap page ; that is to say, the dimensions of
its page are somewhere between those of a schoolboy's slate and a
la<fy's pocket handkerchief. One-fourth of the first page is taken up
with the heading of the journal ; this gives it a rather top-heavy appear-
ance ; the rest of the first page is reading matter ; all of the second page
b reading matter ; the other six pages are devoted to advertisements.

The reading matter is compressed into two hundred and five small
pica lines, and is lighted up with eight pica head-lines. The bill of fare
is as follows: First, under a pica head-line, to enforce attention and
respect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that,
although they are pilgrims here below,* they are yet heirs of heaven ;
and that <* When they depart from earth they soar to heaven.*' Per-
haps a four-line sermon in a Saturday paper is the sufficient German
equivalent of the eight or ten columns of sermons which the jS^ew

A Tramp Abroad 31/

Yorkers get in their Monday morning papers. The latest news (two
days old) follows the four-line sermon, under the pica head-line ** Tele-
grams," — these are ** tel^;raphed " with a pair of scissors out of the
Angshurger Zeiiung of the day before. These telegrams consist of
fourteen and two-thirds lines from Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and.
two and five-eighths lines from Calcutta. Thirty-three small pica lines
of telegraphic news in a daily journal in a King's Capital of 170,000
inhabitants is surely not an overdose. Neict we have the pica heading,
<' News of the Day," under which the following facts are set forth:
Prince Leopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines ; Prince Amulph
is coming back froib Russia, two lines ; the Landtag will meet at ten
o'clock in the morning and consider an election law, three lines and one
word over ; a city government item, five and one-half lines ; prices of
tickets to the proposed grand Charity Ball, twenty-three lines, — for
this one item occupies almost one-fourth of the entire first page ; there
is to be a wonderful Wagner concert in Frankfurt-on-the*Main, with
an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments, seven and one-half
lines. That concludes the first page. Eighty-five lines, altogether, on
that page, including three headlines. About fifty of those lines, as one
perceives, deal with local matters ; so the reporters are not overworked.

Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with ah opera crit-
icism, fifty-three lines (three of them being headlines), and <* Death
Notices," ten lines.

The other half of the second page is made up of two paragraphs
under the head of <* Miscellaneous News." One of these paragraphs
tells about a quarrel between the Czar of Russia and his eldest son,
twenty-one and a half lines ; and the other tells about the atrocious
destruction of a peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth of
the total of the reading matter contained in the paper.

Consider what a fifth part of the reading matter of an American
daily paper issued in a dty of 170,000 inhabitants amounts to ! Think
what a mass it is. Would any one suppose I could so snugly tuck away
such a mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult to find it
again if the reader lost his place? Surely not. I will translate that
child murder word for word, to give the reader a realizing sense of what
a fifth part of the reading matter of a Munich daily actually is when it
comes under measurement of the eye:

*<From Oberkreuzberg, January 21, the Donau Zeitufig receives a
^ong account of a crime, which we shorten as follows: In Rametuach,

318 A Tramp Abroad

a village near ^pfnirhlag, lived a young mairied ooaple with two chfl-
dieD» one of wlikh, a boy aged five, was bom three yeais before the
marriage. For this reaaon* and ato became a relative at Iggensbach
had bequeathed ]ii400 ($ioo) to the boy. the heartless father consid-
ered him in the way ; so the unnatural parents determined to sacrifice
him in the crudest possible manner. They proceeded to starve him
ilowly to death, meantime fris^tful^ maltreating him, — as the village
people now make known, when it is too late. The boy was shut up in
a hole, and when people passed by he cried, and implored them to give
him bread. His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed him
at lart, on the third of January. The sudden (^sic) death of the child
created sn^pkton, the more so as the body was immediately clothed am}
laid upon the bier. Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest
was bdd on the 6th. What a pitiful ^>ectade was disclosed then I The
body was a complete skdeton. The stomach and intestines were utteriy
empty ; they contained nothing ^diatever. The flesh on the corpse was
not as thick as the back of a knife, and indsbns in it brought not a
drop of blood. There was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar
on the whole body; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored eztravasated
blood, eveiywhere, — even on the soles of the feet there were wounds.
The cruel parents asserted that the boy had been so bad that they had
been obliged to use severe punishments, and that he finalty fell over a
bench and broke his neck. However, they were arrested two weeks
after the inquest and put in the prison at Deggendorf."

Yes, they were arrested ** two weeks after the inquest." "Whal a
home sound that has. That kind of police briskness rather more re-
minds me of my native land than German journalism does.

I think a German dafly journal doesn't do any good to speak of, but
at the same time it doesn't do any harm. That is a very large merit,
and should not be lightly weighed nor lightly thought of.

The German humorous papers are beautifully printed upon fine paper,
and the illustrations are finely drawn, finely engraved, and are not vap-
idly funny, but deliciously so. So also, generally speaking, are the two
or three terse sentences which accompany the pictures. I remember
one of these pictures: A most dilapidated tramp is ruefully contem-
plating some coins which lie in his open palm. He says: ** Wdl, beg-
ging is getting played out. Only about five marks ($1.35) ^ t^ whole
day ; many an official makes more I " And I call to mind a picture of a
commercial traveler who is about to unroll his samples:

A Tramp Abroad 319

Merchant (pettishly). — No, don't. I don't want to buy anything I
Drummer, — If you please, I was only going to show you —
Merchant, — But I don't wish to see them 1
Drummer (after a pause, pleadingly). — But do you miiul lettiag
ivf^ look at them 1 I haven't seen them lor three weeks I ^

7^

^"^y 13 1952

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