"Oh, yes--Inman line. We came in the _Batavia_--Cunard you know. What kind of a pa.s.sage did you have?"
"Pretty fair."
"That was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said he"d hardly seen it rougher. Where are you from?"
"New Jersey."
"So"m I. No--I didn"t mean that; I"m from New England. New Bloomfield"s my place. These your children?--belong to both of you?"
"Only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married."
"Single, I reckon? So"m I. Are you two ladies traveling alone?"
"No--my husband is with us."
"Our whole family"s along. It"s awful slow, going around alone--don"t you think so?"
"I suppose it must be."
"Hi, there"s Mount Pilatus coming in sight again. Named after Pontius Pilate, you know, that shot the apple off of William Tell"s head.
Guide-book tells all about it, they say. I didn"t read it--an American told me. I don"t read when I"m knocking around like this, having a good time. Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used to preach?"
"I did not know he ever preached there."
"Oh, yes, he did. That American told me so. He don"t ever shut up his guide-book. He knows more about this lake than the fishes in it.
Besides, they _call_ it "Tell"s Chapel"--you know that yourself. You ever been over here before?"
"Yes."
"I haven"t. It"s my first trip. But we"ve been all around--Paris and everywhere. I"m to enter Harvard next year. Studying German all the time now. Can"t enter till I know German. This book"s Otto"s grammar. It"s a mighty good book to get the _ich habe gehabt haben_"s out of. But I don"t really study when I"m knocking around this way. If the notion takes me, I just run over my little old _ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er hat gehabt, wir haben gehabt, ihr haben gehabt, sie haben gehabt_--kind of "Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep" fashion, you know, and after that, maybe I don"t buckle to it for three days. It"s awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing around in your head same as so much drawn b.u.t.ter. But French is different; _French_ ain"t anything. I ain"t any more afraid of French than a tramp"s afraid of pie; I can rattle off my little _j"ai, tu as, il a_, and the rest of it, just as easy as a-b-c. I get along pretty well in Paris, or anywhere where they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at?"
"The Schweitzerhof."
"No! is that so? I never see you in the big reception-room. I go in there a good deal of the time, because there"s so many Americans there.
I make lots of acquaintances. You been up the Rigi yet?"
"No."
"Going?"
"We think of it."
"What hotel you going to stop at?"
"I don"t know."
"Well, then you stop at the Schreiber--it"s full of Americans. What ship did you come over in?"
"_City of Chester_."
"Oh, yes, I remember I asked you that before. But I always ask everybody what ship they came over in, and so sometimes I forget and ask again.
You going to Geneva?"
"Yes."
"What hotel you going to stop at?"
"We expect to stop in a pension."
"I don"t hardly believe you"ll like that; there"s very few Americans in the pensions. What hotel are you stopping at here?"
"The Schweitzerhof."
"Oh, yes. I asked you that before, too. But I always ask everybody what hotel they"re stopping at, and so I"ve got my head all mixed up with hotels. But it makes talk, and I love to talk. It refreshes me up so--don"t it you--on a trip like this?"
"Yes--sometimes."
"Well, it does me, too. As long as I"m talking I never feel bored--ain"t that the way with you?"
"Yes--generally. But there are exception to the rule."
"Oh, of course. _I_ don"t care to talk to everybody, _myself_. If a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, I get the fan-tods mighty soon. I say "Well, I must be going now--hope I"ll see you again"--and then I take a walk. Where you from?"
"New Jersey."
"Why, bother it all, I asked you _that_ before, too. Have you seen the Lion of Lucerne?"
"Not yet."
"Nor I, either. But the man who told me about Mount Pilatus says it"s one of the things to see. It"s twenty-eight feet long. It don"t seem reasonable, but he said so, anyway. He saw it yesterday; said it was dying, then, so I reckon it"s dead by this time. But that ain"t any matter, of course they"ll stuff it. Did you say the children are yours--or _hers_?"
"Mine."
"Oh, so you did. Are you going up the ... no, I asked you that. What ship ... no, I asked you that, too. What hotel are you ... no, you told me that. Let me see ... um .... Oh, what kind of voy ... no, we"ve been over that ground, too. Um ... um ... well, I believe that is all.
_bonjour_--I am very glad to have made your acquaintance, ladies, _guten tag_."
CHAPTER XXVIII
[The Jodel and Its Native Wilds]
The Rigi-Kulm is an imposing Alpine ma.s.s, six thousand feet high, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains--a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles in circ.u.mference. The ascent is made by rail, or horseback, or on foot, as one may prefer. I and my agent panoplied ourselves in walking-costume, one bright morning, and started down the lake on the steamboat; we got ash.o.r.e at the village of Waeggis; three-quarters of an hour distant from Lucerne. This village is at the foot of the mountain.
We were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule-path, and then the talk began to flow, as usual. It was twelve o"clock noon, and a breezy, cloudless day; the ascent was gradual, and the glimpses, from under the curtaining boughs, of blue water, and tiny sailboats, and beetling cliffs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland. All the circ.u.mstances were perfect--and the antic.i.p.ations, too, for we should soon be enjoying, for the first time, that wonderful spectacle, an Alpine sunrise--the object of our journey. There was (apparently) no real need for hurry, for the guide-book made the walking-distance from Waeggis to the summit only three hours and a quarter. I say "apparently," because the guide-book had already fooled us once--about the distance from Allerheiligen to Oppenau--and for aught I knew it might be getting ready to fool us again. We were only certain as to the alt.i.tudes--we calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours it is from the bottom to the top. The summit is six thousand feet above the sea, but only forty-five hundred feet above the lake. When we had walked half an hour, we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking, so we cleared for action; that is to say, we got a boy whom we met to carry our alpenstocks and satchels and overcoats and things for us; that left us free for business. I suppose we must have stopped oftener to stretch out on the gra.s.s in the shade and take a bit of a smoke than this boy was used to, for presently he asked if it had been our idea to hire him by the job, or by the year? We told him he could move along if he was in a hurry. He said he wasn"t in such a very particular hurry, but he wanted to get to the top while he was young.
We told him to clear out, then, and leave the things at the uppermost hotel and say we should be along presently. He said he would secure us a hotel if he could, but if they were all full he would ask them to build another one and hurry up and get the paint and plaster dry against we arrived. Still gently chaffing us, he pushed ahead, up the trail, and soon disappeared. By six o"clock we were pretty high up in the air, and the view of lake and mountains had greatly grown in breadth and interest. We halted awhile at a little public house, where we had bread and cheese and a quart or two of fresh milk, out on the porch, with the big panorama all before us--and then moved on again.