So I steered into the main street, but there I found such a
yelling and roaring as I had never heard before, and very damnable it
was; as though men were determined to do common evil wherever God has
given them a chance of living in awe and worship.
For they were all bawling and howling, with great placards and
tickets, and saying, 'This way to the Extraordinary Waterfall; that
way to the Strange Cave. Come with me and you shall see the
never-to-be-forgotten Falls of the Aar,' and so forth. So that my
illusion of being alone in the roots of the world dropped off me very
quickly, and I wondered how people could be so helpless and foolish as
to travel about in Switzerland as tourists and meet with all this
vulgarity and beastliness.
If a man goes to drink good wine he does not say, 'So that the wine be
good I do not mind eating strong pepper and smelling hartshorn as I
drink it,' and if a man goes to read a good verse, for instance, Jean
Richepin, he does not say, 'Go on playing on the trombone, go on
banging the cymbals; so long as I am reading good verse I am content.'
Yet men now go into the vast hills and sleep and live in their
recesses, and pretend to be indifferent to all the touts and shouters
and hurry and hotels and high prices and abominations.
