"Sho, you ought to stop at the Schweitzerhof. Didn't you
know the Schweitzerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland?
- look at your Baedeker."
"Yes, I know - but I had an idea there warn't any
Americans there."
"No Americans! Why, bless your soul, it's just alive with
them! I'm in the great reception-room most all the time.
I make lots of acquaintances there. Not as many as I did
at first, because now only the new ones stop in there
- the others go right along through. Where are you from?"
"Arkansaw."
"Is that so? I'm from New England - New Bloomfield's my town
when I'm at home. I'm having a mighty good time today,
ain't you?"
"Divine."
"That's what I call it. I like this knocking around,
loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking.
I know an American, soon as I see him; so I go and speak
to him and make his acquaintance. I ain't ever bored,
on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk.
I'm awful fond of talking when I can get hold of the right
kind of a person, ain't you?"
"I prefer it to any other dissipation."
"That's my notion, too. Now some people like to take
a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon
around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things,
but that ain't my way; no, sir, if they like it, let 'em do it,
I don't object; but as for me, talking's what _I_ like.
You been up the Rigi?"
"Yes."
"What hotel did you stop at?"
"Schreiber."
"That's the place! - I stopped there too. FULL of Americans,
WASN'T it? It always is - always is. That's what they say.
Everybody says that. What ship did you come over in?"
"VILLE DE PARIS."
"French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did ... excuse me
a minute, there's some Americans I haven't seen before."
And away he went. He went uninjured, too - I had the murderous
impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock,
but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me;
I found I hadn't the heart to kill him, he was such
a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.
Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting,
with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were
skimming by - a monolith not shaped by man, but by Nature's
free great hand - a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high,
devised by Nature ten million years ago against the day
when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument.
The time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer
bears Schiller's name in huge letters upon its face.
Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled
in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let
himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys,
and painted all over it, in blue letters bigger than those in
Schiller's name, these words:
