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:
"Try Sozodont;" "Buy Sun Stove Polish;" "Helmbold's Buchu;"
"Try Benzaline for the Blood."
He was captured and it turned out that he was an American.
Upon his trial the judge said to him:
"You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is
privileged to profane and insult Nature, and, through her,
Nature's God, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny
in his pocket. But here the case is different. Because you
are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your sentence light;
if you were a native I would deal strenuously with you.
Hear and obey: - You will immediately remove every trace
of your offensive work from the Schiller monument; you pay
a fine of ten thousand francs; you will suffer two years'
imprisonment at hard labor; you will then be horsewhipped,
tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a
rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever.
The severest penalties are omitted in your case - not as
a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the
misfortune to give you birth."
The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across
the deck. My back hair was mingling innocently with
the back hair of a couple of ladies. Presently they
were addressed by some one and I overheard this conversation:
"You are Americans, I think? So'm I."
"Yes - we are Americans."
"I knew it - I can always tell them. What ship did you
come over in?"
"CITY OF CHESTER."
"Oh, yes - Inman line. We came in the BATAVIA - Cunard
you know. What kind of a passage did you have?"
"Pretty fair."
"That was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said
he'd hardly seen it rougher. Where are you from?"
"New Jersey."
"So'm I. No - I didn't mean that; I'm from New England.
New Bloomfield's my place. These your children? - belong
to both of you?"
"Only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married."
"Single, I reckon? So'm I. Are you two ladies traveling alone?"
"No - my husband is with us."
"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around
alone - don't you think so?"
"I suppose it must be."
"Hi, there's Mount Pilatus coming in sight again.
Named after Pontius Pilate, you know, that shot the apple
off of William Tell's head. Guide-book tells all about it,
they say. I didn't read it - an American told me. I don't
read when I'm knocking around like this, having a good time.
Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used
to preach?"
"I did not know he ever preached there."
"Oh, yes, he did. That American told me so. He don't
ever shut up his guide-book. He knows more about this lake
than the fishes in it. Besides, they CALL it 'Tell's
Chapel' - you know that yourself. You ever been over here
before?"
"Yes."
"I haven't. It's my first trip. But we've been all around
- Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year.
Studying German all the time now. Can't enter till I
know German. This book's Otto's grammar. It's a mighty
good book to get the ICH HABE GEHABT HABEN's out of.
But I don't really study when I'm knocking around this way.
If the notion takes me, I just run over my little
old ICH HABE GEHABT, DU HAST GEHABT, ER HAT GEHABT,
WIR HABEN GEHABT, IHR HABEN GEHABT, SIE HABEN GEHABT
- kind of 'Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know,
and after that, maybe I don't buckle to it for three days.
It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is;
you want to take it in small doses, or first you know
your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing
around in your head same as so much drawn butter.
But French is different; FRENCH ain't anything. I ain't
any more afraid of French than a tramp's afraid of pie; I can
rattle off my little J'AI, TU AS, IL A, and the rest of it,
just as easy as a-b-c. I get along pretty well in Paris,
or anywhere where they speak French. What hotel are you
stopping at?"
"The Schweitzerhof."
"No!
