"Well?"
Riley said:
"Well, - that was thirty years ago."
"Very well, very well - what of it?"
"I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes
every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago
- he's off for Tennessee early tomorrow morning - as usual;
said he calculated to get his claim through and be off
before night-owls like me have turned out of bed.
The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going
to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more."
Another silent pause. The stranger broke it:
"Is that all?"
"That is all."
"Well, for the TIME of night, and the KIND of night,
it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what's
it all FOR?"
"Oh, nothing in particular."
"Well, where's the point of it?"
"Oh, there isn't any particular point to it. Only, if you
are not in TOO much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco
with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I'd advise
you to 'PUT UP AT GADSBY'S' for a spell, and take it easy.
Good-by. GOD bless you!"
So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left
the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing
and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow
of the street-lamp.
He never got that post-office.
To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded,
after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes
to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed
and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up
at Gadsby's" and take it easy. It is likely that a fish
has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years;
but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there
all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it.
One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented
and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris,
but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there
in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all - the
recent dog and the translated cat.
CHAPTER XXVII
[I Spare an Awful Bore]
Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the
"Glacier Garden" - and it is the only one in the world.
It is on high ground. Four or five years ago,
some workmen who were digging foundations for a house
came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age.
Scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their
theories concerning the glacial period; so through
their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought
and permanently protected against being built upon.
The soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered
track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved
along upon its slow and tedious journey. This track
was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock,
formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders
by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers.
These huge round boulders still remain in the holes;
they and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by
the long-continued chafing which they gave each other
in those old days. It took a mighty force to churn
these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way.
The neighboring country had a very different shape,
at that time - the valleys have risen up and become hills,
since, and the hills have become valleys. The boulders
discovered in the pots had traveled a great distance,
for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant
Rhone Glacier.
For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue
lake Lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains
that border it all around - an enticing spectacle,
this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty
and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun blazing
upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it - but finally
we concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on
a steamboat, and a dash on foot at the Rigi. Very well,
we had a delightful trip to Fluelen, on a breezy, sunny day.
Everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under an awning;
everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonder scenery;
in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection
of pleasuring. The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel.
Sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake,
and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer
with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way.
Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high
enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their
foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive,
but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye.
And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes,
that one could not imagine a man being able to keep
his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths,
and the Swiss people go up and down them every day.
Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight
inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards
- then high aloft, toward the sky, it took a little
stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof - and
perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little
things like martin boxes, and presently perceived that
these were the dwellings of peasants - an airy place
for a home, truly. And suppose a peasant should walk
in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front
yard? - the friends would have a tedious long journey down
out of those cloud-heights before they found the remains.
And yet those far-away homes looked ever so seductive,
they were so remote from the troubled world, they dozed
in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams - surely no one
who has learned to live up there would ever want
to live on a meaner level.
