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!
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