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I saw the Alps, and a thunderstorm in the Alps, passed starlit nights on the Swiss lakes, traced the courses of foaming mountain streams such as the Tamina at Pfaeffers, ascended the Rigi at a silly forced march, and from the Kulm saw a procession of clouds that gripped my fancy like the procession of the Vanir in Northern mythology.
Now, a town must always, from a very early period, have existed upon the exact site of Fiesole. And why? To answer that question you have only to look at the view from the platform. I do not mean to suggest that the ancient Etruscans came there to enjoy the prospect as we go nowadays to the hotels on the Rigi or to the summit of Mount Washington.
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.
A sort of patriarchal democracy is evolved: that is, certain men and certain families are apt to maintain themselves at the head of public affairs, but with the consent and cooperation of the whole population. There is hardly a spot associated with the rise of the Swiss Confederation whose position can not be determined from the Rigi.
On the Rigi his musings on the magnificence of the view are checked by the presence of a cretin. Behold the contrast! An idiot with a goitre and an enormous face, a blank stare, and a stupid laugh is sole participator with Victor Hugo in this "marvellous festival of the mountains." "Oh! abysm!" he cries; "the Alps were the spectacle, the spectator was an idiot!
I have seen such a storm on the Rigi, however, and more than one such sunrise; and I much doubt if its present visitors by rail will see more. The account given of the stages of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the simplest reader, except in the statement of the work of the second day.
That's the way I always do I just go 'round, 'round, 'round and talk, talk, talk I never get bored. You been up the Rigi yet?" "No." "Going?" "I think so." "What hotel you going to stop at?" "I don't know. Is there more than one?" "Three. You stop at the Schreiber you'll find it full of Americans. What ship did you say you came over in?" "German, I guess. You going to Geneva?" "Yes."
To love you as you desire to be loved is not that enough to make a young man guard himself against every evil folly? Is it not to concentrate all his powers in a noble passion, of which in the future he may be proud, and which can leave none but lovely memories? If you could but know with what hues you have clothed the chain of Pilatus, the Rigi, and this superb lake "
"I have been to the top of Rigi, and old Pilatus and Vesuvius, and Flegere, and crossed the Mer-de-Glace and Tete Noir, and the Simplon, and they are all here on my Alpenstock; look, see! but no, you cannot, it is so dark! I'll raise the curtain." And Grey hastened to the window, while his grandfather cried out in alarm: "Stop, Grey, stop. I'll call your Aunt Hannah! Hannah, come here!"
One such committee appeared in the dining-room of the Rigi Kulm at the dinner-hour, which on Sundays was between 1 and 3. It represented a day nursery, an establishment where the children of the East Side poor are taken care of while their mothers are at work, and it consisted of two men, one of whom was an eloquent young rabbi.
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