Of a flour barrel, and will have a bad name and lose
custom. I hope so anyway. It looks to be my one chance of getting
even with the owner for penalizing me in the matter of baths.
From Vienna we went southward into the Tyrolese Alps. It was a
wonderful ride - that ride through the Semmering and on down to
Northern Italy. Our absurdly short little locomotive, drawing our
absurdly long train, went boring in and out of a wrinkly shoulder-seam
of the Tyrols like a stubby needle going through a tuck. I think
in thirty miles we threaded thirty tunnels; after that I was
practically asphyxiated and lost count.
If I ever take that journey again I shall wear a smoke helmet and
be comfortable. But always between tunnels there were views to
be seen that would have revived one of the Seven Sleepers. Now,
on the great-granddaddy-longlegs of all the spidery trestles that
ever were built, we would go roaring across a mighty gorge, its
sides clothed with perpendicular gardens and vineyards, and with
little gray towns clustering under the ledges on its sheer walls
like mud-daubers' nests beneath an eave. Now, perched on a ridgy
outcrop of rock like a single tooth in a snaggled reptilian jaw,
would be a deserted tower, making a fellow think of the good old
feudal days when the robber barons robbed the traveler instead of
as at present, when the job is so completely attended to by the
pirates who weigh and register baggage in these parts.
