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 Glaus, 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 dcwn 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 naturally held in
UNIVERSITY
v OF
A Tramp Abroad * ML-FC^
great reverence. His portrait is common in the
farmhouses of the region, but is believed by many
to be but an indifferent likeness. During 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 Brunnen,
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 the valley
below, burying four villages and five hundred peo
ple, as in a grave.
We had such a beautiful day, and such endless
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 drink all the milk, and eat all the
grapes and apricots and berries, and buy all the
bouquets of wild flowers which the little peasant
boys and girls offered for sale ; but we had to retire
from this contract, for it was too heavy. At short
distances, and they were entirely too short, all
26 A Tramp Abroad
along the road, were groups of nezt 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
the 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
mainly 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
afraid 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 around the thing I spoke 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 buckling
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,
and 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 musketry.
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 con
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
till he thundered 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 swaggered about, the little boys gazed
up 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
3**
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
tiunks, arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon popu-
A Tramp Abroad 31
lous. 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
obeying the guide-book and taking the wine of the
country ; but the bride said :
44 What, that nahsty stuff!"
14 It isn t nahsty, pet, it s quite good."
44 It is nahsty."
44 No, it isn t nahsty."
44 It s tfful 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 anything
but champagne. She added :
4 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 him 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:
14 Well, you would have me, nothing else would
32 A Tramp Abroad
do, so you ll have to make the best of a bad
bargain. Do order the champagne, I m <?ul 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 elderly 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 speak. 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 the 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
8*
34 A Tramp Abroad
with pictures of coaches and carnages 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 rny 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
c**
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 7/w-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.
WE located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one
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 hote 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 pate de
foie gras backstitched to the mise en scene in the
form of a jeu <T 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 roonv 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