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Next morning we left in the train for Switzerland, and reached Lucerne about ten o’clock at night. The first discovery I made was that the beauty of the lake had not been exaggerated. Within a day or two I made another discovery. This was, that the lauded chamois is not a wild goat; that it is not a horned animal; that it is not shy; that it does not avoid human society; and that there is no peril in hunting it.
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The chamois is a black or brown creature no bigger than a mustard seed; you do not have to go after it, it comes after you; it arrives in vast herds and skips and scampers all over your body, inside your clothes; thus it is not shy, but extremely sociable; it is not afraid of man, on the contrary, it will attack him; its bite is not dangerous, but neither is it pleasant; its activity has not been overstated—if you try to put your finger on it, it will skip a thousand times its own length at one jump, and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights. A great deal of romantic nonsense has been written about the Swiss chamois and the perils of hunting it, whereas the truth is that even women and children hunt it, and fearlessly; indeed, everybody hunts it; the hunting is going on all the time, day and night, in bed and out of it. It is poetic foolishness to hunt it with a gun; very few people do that; there is not one man in a million who can hit it with a gun. It is much easier to catch it than it is to shoot it, and only the experienced chamois-hunter can do either. Another common piece of exaggeration is that about the “scarcity” of the chamois. It is the reverse of scarce. Droves of one hundred million chamois are not unusual in the Swiss hotels. Indeed, they are so numerous as to be a great pest. The romancers always dress up the chamois-hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume, whereas the best way to hunt this game is to do it without any costume at all.
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The article of commerce called chamois-skin is another fraud; nobody could skin a chamois, it is too small. The creature is a humbug in every way, and everything which has been written about it is sentimental exaggeration. It was no pleasure to me to find the chamois out, for he had been one of my pet illusions; all my life it had been my dream to see him in his native wilds some day, and engage in the adventurous sport of chasing him from cliff to cliff. It is no pleasure to me to expose him, now, and destroy the reader’s delight in him and respect for him, but still it must be done, for when an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
Lucerne is a charming place. It begins at the water’s edge, with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads itself over two or three sharp hills in a crowded, disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square tower of heavy masonry. And also here and there a town clock with only one hand—a hand which stretches across the dial and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it. Between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade trees. The lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier, and has a railing, to keep people from walking overboard. All day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses, children, and tourists sit in the shade of the trees, or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake at the stately border of snow-hooded mountain peaks. Little pleasure steamers, black with people, are coming and going all the time; and everywhere one sees young girls and young men paddling about in fanciful rowboats, or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind. The front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies, where one may take his private luncheon in calm, cool comfort and look down upon this busy and pretty scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work connected with it.
Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking costume, and carry alpenstocks. Evidently, it is not considered safe to go about in Switzerland, even in town, without an alpenstock. If the tourist forgets and comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner. When his touring in Switzerland is finished, he does not throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him, to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could. You see, the alpenstock is his trophy; his name is burned upon it; and if he has climbed a hill, or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, he has the names of those places burned upon it, too.
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Thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears the record of his achievements. It is worth three francs when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it. There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist. And observe, a man is respected in Switzerland according to his alpenstock. I found I could get no attention there, while I carried an unbranded one. However, branding is not expected, so I soon remedied that. The effect upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked. I felt repaid for my trouble.
Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of English people; the other half is made up of many nationalities, the Germans leading and the Americans coming next. The Americans were not as numerous as I had expected they would be.
The seven-thirty table d’hôte at the great Schweitzerhof furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities, but it offered a better opportunity to observe costumes than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables, and therefore the faces were mainly seen in perspective; but the breakfasts were served at small round tables, and then if one had the fortune to get a table in the midst of the assemblage he could have as many faces to study as he could desire. We used to try to guess out the nationalities, and generally succeeded tolerably well. Sometimes we tried to guess people’s names; but that was a failure; that is a thing which probably requires a good deal of practice. We presently dropped it and gave our efforts to less difficult particulars. One morning I said:
“There is an American party.”
Harris said:
“Yes—but name the state.”
I named one state, Harris named another. We agreed upon one thing, however—that the young girl with the party was very beautiful, and very tastefully dressed. But we disagreed as to her age. I said she was eighteen, Harris said she was twenty. The dispute between us waxed warm, and I finally said, with a pretense of being in earnest:
“Well, there is one way to settle the matter—I will go and ask her."
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Harris said, sarcastically, “Certainly, that is the thing to do. All you need to do is to use the common formula over here: go and say, ’I’m an American!’ Of course she will be glad to see you.”
Then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger of my venturing to speak to her.
I said, “I was only talking—I didn’t intend to approach her, but I see that you do not know what an intrepid person I am. I am not afraid of any woman that walks. I will go and speak to this young girl.”
The thing I had in my mind was not difficult. I meant to address her in the most respectful way and ask her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former acquaintance of mine was deceiving me; and when she should reply that the name I mentioned was not the name she bore, I meant to beg pardon again, most respectfully, and retire. There would be no harm done. I walked to her table, bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her and was about to begin my little speech when she exclaimed:
“IknewI wasn’t mistaken—I told John it was you! John said it probably wasn’t, but I knew I was right. I said you would recognize me presently and come over; and I’m glad you did, for I shouldn’t have felt much flattered if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me. Sit down, sit down—how odd it is—you are the last person I was ever expecting to see again."
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This was a stupefying surprise. It took my wits clear away, for an instant. However, we shook hands cordially all around, and I sat down. But truly this was the tightest place I ever was in. I seemed to vaguely remember the girl’s face, now, but I had no idea where I had seen it before, or what name belonged with it. I immediately tried to get up a diversion about Swiss scenery, to keep her from launching into topics that might betray that I did not know her, but it was of no use, she went right along upon matters which interested her more:
“Oh dear, what a night that was, when the sea washed the forward boats away—do you remember it?”
“Oh,don’t I!” said I—but I didn’t. I wished the sea had washed the rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain away—then I could have located this questioner.
“And don’t you remember how frightened poor Mary was, and how she cried?”
“Indeed I do!” said I. “Dear me, how it all comes back!”
I fervently wished itwouldcome back—but my memory was a blank. The wise way would have been to frankly own up; but I could not bring myself to do that, after the young girl had praised me so for recognizing her; so I went on, deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue but never getting one. The Unrecognizable continued, with vivacity:
“Do you know, George married Mary, after all?”
“Why, no! Did he?”
“Indeed he did. He said he did not believe she was half as much to blame as her father was, and I thought he was right. Didn’t you?”
“Of course he was. It was a perfectly plain case. I always said so.”
“Why, no you didn’t!—at least that summer.”
“Oh, no, not that summer. No, you are perfectly right about that. It was the following winter that I said it.”
“Well, as it turned out, Mary was not in the least to blame—it was all her father’s fault—at least his and old Darley’s.”
It was necessary to say something—so I said:
“I always regarded Darley as a troublesome old thing.”
“So he was, but then they always had a great affection for him, although he had so many eccentricities. You remember that when the weather was the least cold, he would try to come into the house.”
I was rather afraid to proceed. Evidently Darley was not a man—he must be some other kind of animal—possibly a dog, maybe an elephant. However, tails are common to all animals, so I ventured to say:
“And what a tail he had!”
“One! He had a thousand!”
This was bewildering. I did not quite know what to say, so I only said:
“Yes, hewasrather well fixed in the matter of tails.”
“For a negro, and a crazy one at that, I should say he was,” said she.
It was getting pretty sultry for me. I said to myself, “Is it possible she is going to stop there, and wait for me to speak? If she does, the conversation is blocked. A negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more or less preparation. As to diving rashly into such a vast subject—”
But here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thoughts by saying:
“Yes, when it came to tales of his crazy woes, there was simply no end to them if anybody would listen. His own quarters were comfortable enough, but when the weather was cold, the family were sure to have his company—nothing could keep him out of the house. But they always bore it kindly because he had saved Tom’s life, years before. You remember Tom?
“Oh, perfectly. Fine fellow he was, too.”
“Yes he was. And what a pretty little thing his child was!”
“You may well say that. I never saw a prettier child.”
“I used to delight to pet it and dandle it and play with it.”
“So did I.”
“You named it. Whatwasthat name? I can’t call it to mind.”
It appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty thin, here. I would have given something to know what the child’s was. However, I had the good luck to think of a name that would fit either sex—so I brought it out:
“I named it Frances.”
“From a relative, I suppose? But you named the one that died, too—one that I never saw. What did you call that one?”
I was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead and she had never seen it, I thought I might risk a name for it and trust to luck. Therefore I said:
“I called that one Thomas Henry.”
She said, musingly:
“That is very singular ... very singular.”
I sat still and let the cold sweat run down. I was in a good deal of trouble, but I believed I could worry through if she wouldn’t ask me to name any more children. I wondered where the lightning was going to strike next. She was still ruminating over that last child’s title, but presently she said:
“I have always been sorry you were away at the time—I would have had you name my child.”
“Yourchild! Are you married?”
“I have been married thirteen years.”
“Christened, you mean.”
`"No, married. The youth by your side is my son.”
“It seems incredible—even impossible. I do not mean any harm by it, but would you mind telling me if you are any over eighteen?—that is to say, will you tell me how old you are?”
“I was just nineteen the day of the storm we were talking about. That was my birthday.”
That did not help matters, much, as I did not know the date of the storm. I tried to think of some non-committal thing to say, to keep up my end of the talk, and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences as little noticeable as possible, but I seemed to be about out of non-committal things. I was about to say, “You haven’t changed a bit since then”—but that was risky. I thought of saying, “You have improved ever so much since then”—but that wouldn’t answer, of course. I was about to try a shy at the weather, for a saving change, when the girl slipped in ahead of me and said:
“How I have enjoyed this talk over those happy old times—haven’t you?”
“I never have spent such a half-hour in all my life before!” said I, with emotion; and I could have added, with a near approach to truth, “and I would rather be scalped than spend another one like it.” I was holily grateful to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make my good-bys and get out, when the girl said:
“But there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me.”
“Why, what is that?”
“That dead child’s name. What did you say it was?”
Here was another balmy place to be in: I had forgotten the child’s name; I hadn’t imagined it would be needed again. However, I had to pretend to know, anyway, so I said:
“Joseph William.”
The youth at my side corrected me, and said:
“No, Thomas Henry.”
I thanked him—in words—and said, with trepidation:
“O yes—I was thinking of another child that I named—I have named a great many, and I get them confused—this one was named Henry Thompson—”
“Thomas Henry,” calmly interposed the boy.
I thanked him again—strictly in words—and stammered out:
“Thomas Henry—yes, Thomas Henry was the poor child’s name. I named him for Thomas—er—Thomas Carlyle, the great author, you know—and Henry—er—er—Henry the Eighth. The parents were very grateful to have a child named Thomas Henry.”
“That makes it more singular than ever,” murmured my beautiful friend.
“Does it? Why?”
“Because when the parents speak of that child now, they always call it Susan Amelia.”
That spiked my gun. I could not say anything. I was entirely out of verbal obliquities; to go further would be to lie, and that I would not do; so I simply sat still and suffered—sat mutely and resignedly there, and sizzled—for I was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes. Presently the enemy laughed a happy laugh and said:
“Ihaveenjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not. I saw very soon that you were only pretending to know me, and so as I had wasted a compliment on you in the beginning, I made up my mind to punish you. And I have succeeded pretty well. I was glad to see that you knew George and Tom and Darley, for I had never heard of them before and therefore could not be sure that you had; and I was glad to learn the names of those imaginary children, too. One can get quite a fund of information out of you if one goes at it cleverly. Mary and the storm, and the sweeping away of the forward boats, were facts—all the rest was fiction. Mary was my sister; her full name was Mary ———.Nowdo you remember me?”
“Yes,” I said, “I do remember you now; and you are as hard-headed as you were thirteen years ago in that ship, else you wouldn’t have punished me so. You haven’t changed your nature nor your person, in any way at all; you look as young as you did then, you are just as beautiful as you were then, and you have transmitted a deal of your comeliness to this fine boy. There—if that speech moves you any, let’s fly the flag of truce, with the understanding that I am conquered and confess it.”
All of which was agreed to and accomplished, on the spot. When I went back to Harris, I said:
“Now you see what a person with talent and address can do.”
“Excuse me, I see what a person of colossal ignorance and simplicity can do. The idea of your going and intruding on a party of strangers, that way, and talking for half an hour; why I never heard of a man in his right mind doing such a thing before. What did you say to them?"
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“I never said any harm. I merely asked the girl what her name was.”
“I don’t doubt it. Upon my word I don’t. I think you were capable of it. It was stupid in me to let you go over there and make such an exhibition of yourself. But you know I couldn’t really believe you would do such an inexcusable thing. What will those people think of us? But how did you say it?—I mean the manner of it. I hope you were not abrupt.”
“No, I was careful about that. I said, ‘My friend and I would like to know what your name is, if you don’t mind.’”
“No, that was not abrupt. There is a polish about it that does you infinite credit. And I am glad you put me in; that was a delicate attention which I appreciate at its full value. What did she do?”
“She didn’t do anything in particular. She told me her name.”
“Simply told you her name. Do you mean to say she did not show any surprise?”
“Well, now I come to think, she did show something; maybe it was surprise; I hadn’t thought of that—I took it for gratification.”
“Oh, undoubtedly you were right; it must have been gratification; it could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted by a stranger with such a question as that. Then what did you do?”
“I offered my hand and the party gave me a shake.”
“I saw it! I did not believe my own eyes, at the time. Did the gentleman say anything about cutting your throat?”
“No, they all seemed glad to see me, as far as I could judge.”
“And do you know, I believe they were. I think they said to themselves, ‘Doubtless this curiosity has got away from his keeper—let us amuse ourselves with him.’ There is no other way of accounting for their facile docility. You sat down. Did theyaskyou to sit down?”
“No, they did not ask me, but I suppose they did not think of it.”
“You have an unerring instinct. What else did you do? What did you talk about?”
“Well, I asked the girl how old she was.”
“Undoubtedly. Your delicacy is beyond praise. Go on, go on—don’t mind my apparent misery—I always look so when I am steeped in a profound and reverent joy. Go on—she told you her age?”
“Yes, she told me her age, and all about her mother, and her grandmother, and her other relations, and all about herself.”
“Did she volunteer these statistics?”
“No, not exactly that. I asked the questions and she answered them.”
“This is divine. Go on—it is not possible that you forgot to inquire into her politics?”
“No, I thought of that. She is a democrat, her husband is a republican, and both of them are Baptists.”
“Her husband? Is that child married?”
“She is not a child. She is married, and that is her husband who is there with her.”
“Has she any children.”
“Yes—seven and a half.”
“That is impossible.”
“No, she has them. She told me herself.”
“Well, but seven and ahalf? How do you make out the half? Where does the half come in?”
“There is a child which she had by another husband—not this one but another one—so it is a stepchild, and they do not count in full measure.”
“Another husband? Has she another husband?”
“Yes, four. This one is number four.”
“I don’t believe a word of it. It is impossible, upon its face. Is that boy there her brother?”
“No, that is her son. He is her youngest. He is not as old as he looked; he is only eleven and a half.”
“These things are all manifestly impossible. This is a wretched business. It is a plain case: they simply took your measure, and concluded to fill you up. They seem to have succeeded. I am glad I am not in the mess; they may at least be charitable enough to think there ain’t a pair of us. Are they going to stay here long?”
“No, they leave before noon.”
“There is one man who is deeply grateful for that. How did you find out? You asked, I suppose?”
“No, along at first I inquired into their plans, in a general way, and they said they were going to be here a week, and make trips round about; but toward the end of the interview, when I said you and I would tour around with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked if you were from the same establishment that I was. I said you were, and then they said they had changed their mind and considered it necessary to start at once and visit a sick relative in Siberia.”
“Ah, me, you struck the summit! You struck the loftiest altitude of stupidity that human effort has ever reached. You shall have a monument of jackasses’ skulls as high as the Strasburg spire if you die before I do. They wanted to know I was from the same ‘establishment’ that you hailed from, did they? What did they mean by ‘establishment’?”
“I don’t know; it never occurred to me to ask.”
“WellIknow. They meant an asylum—anidiotasylum, do you understand? So theydothink there’s a pair of us, after all. Now what do you think of yourself?”
“Well, I don’t know. I didn’t know I was doing any harm; I didn’tmeanto do any harm. They were very nice people, and they seemed to like me.”
Harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom—to break some furniture, he said. He was a singularly irascible man; any little thing would disturb his temper.
I had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, I took it out on Harris. One should always “get even” in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting.
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The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. All summer long the tourists flock to that church about six o’clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen to the noise. They don’t stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. This tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and best organ in Europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favorable place to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true, there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. Then right away the organist would let go another avalanche.
The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting.
The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff—for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.
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Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion—and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.
Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. None of these qualities are kingly but the last. Taken together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. He knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be the king—but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good—he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then—but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. His comprehension was always a train or two behindhand. If a national toe required amputating, he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first perceived that the toe needed cutting off—so he cut it off; and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the disease had reached the thigh. He was good, and honest, and well meaning, in the matter of chasing national diseases, but he never could overtake one. As a private man, he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was strictly contemptible.
His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of August, when he allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, and forbade them to shed the “sacred French blood” purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit of Saint Louis had descended upon him. It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which would answer just as well to remember the 10th of August by.
Martyrdom made a saint of Mary Queen of Scots three hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her saintship yet. Martyrdom made a saint of the trivial and foolish Marie Antoinette, and her biographers still keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, while unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, she supplied—the instinct to root out and get rid of an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him. The hideous but beneficent French Revolution would have been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, or even might not have happened at all, if Marie Antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born. The world owes a great deal to the French Revolution, and consequently to its two chief promoters, Louis the Poor in Spirit and his queen.
We did not buy any wooden images of the Lion, nor any ivory or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones, or even any photographic slanders of him. The truth is, these copies were so common, so universal, in the shops and everywhere, that they presently became as intolerable to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually becomes to the harassed ear. In Lucerne, too, the wood carvings of other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look upon when one saw them occasionally at home, soon began to fatigue us. We grew very tired of seeing wooden quails and chickens picking and strutting around clock-faces, and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them. The first day, I would have bought a hundred and fifty of these clocks if I had the money—and I did buy three—but on the third day the disease had run its course, I had convalesced, and was in the market once more—trying to sell. However, I had no luck; which was just as well, for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when I get them home.
For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; now here I was, at last, right in the creature’s home; so wherever I went that distressing “HOO’hoo! HOO’hoo! HOO’hoo!” was always in my ears. For a nervous man, this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly, and aggravating as the “HOO’hoo” of a cuckoo clock, I think. I bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person; for I have always said that if the opportunity ever happened, I would do that man an ill turn.
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What I meant, was, that I would break one of his legs, or something of that sort; but in Lucerne I instantly saw that I could impair his mind. That would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way. So I bought the cuckoo clock; and if I ever get home with it, he is “my meat,” as they say in the mines. I thought of another candidate—a book-reviewer whom I could name if I wanted to—but after thinking it over, I didn’t buy him a clock. I couldn’t injure his mind.
We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span the green and brilliant Reuss just below where it goes plunging and hurrahing out of the lake. These rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water. They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old Swiss masters—old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence of art.
The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water is very clear. The parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages. One day I thought I would stop and see a fish caught. The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which I had not thought of before for twelve years. This one:
THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY’S
When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in Washington, in the winter of ‘67, we were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. “This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain’t you?”
Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said:
“I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?”
“That’s just what I was doing,” said the man, joyously, “and it’s the biggest luck in the world that I’ve found you. My name is Lykins. I’m one of the teachers of the high school—San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it—and here I am.”
“Yes,” said Riley, slowly, “as you have remarked ... Mr. Lykins ... here you are. And have you got it?”
“Well, not exactlygotit, but the next thing to it. I’ve brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you’ll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home.”
“If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation tonight,” said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it—to an unaccustomed ear.
“Oh, tonight, by all means! I haven’t got any time to fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed—I ain’t the talking kind, I’m thedoingkind!”
“Yes ... you’ve come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?”
“Just an hour ago.”
“When are you intending to leave?”
“For New York tomorrow evening—for San Francisco next morning.”
“Just so.... What are you going to do tomorrow?”
“Do! Why, I’ve got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven’t I?”
“Yes ... very true ... that is correct. And then what?”
“Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.—got to get the appointment confirmed—I reckon you’ll grant that?”
“Yes ... yes,” said Riley, meditatively, “you are right again. Then you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?”
“That’s it—that’s the way I map it out!”
Riley considered a while, and then said:
“You couldn’t stay ... a day ... well, say two days longer?”
“Bless your soul, no! It’s not my style. I ain’t a man to go fooling around—I’m a man thatdoesthings, I tell you.”
The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said:
“Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby’s, once? ... But I see you haven’t.”
He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest: