A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

knowing that language–what excuse can they offer? The

foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact

equivalents in a nobler language–English; yet they think

they ‘adorn their page’ when they say STRASSE for street,

and BAHNHOF for railway-station, and so on–flaunting

these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader’s face

and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the

sign of untold riches held in reserve. I will let your

‘learning’ remain in your report; you have as much right,

I suppose, to ‘adorn your page’ with Zulu and Chinese

and Choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to adorn

theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half

a dozen learned tongues whose A-B ABS they don’t even know.”

When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel,

he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up.

Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the

tranquil and unsuspecting Agent. I can be dreadfully rough

on a person when the mood takes me.

CHAPTER XXXI

[Alp-scaling by Carriage]

We now prepared for a considerable walk–from Lucerne

to Interlaken, over the Bru”nig Pass. But at the last moment

the weather was so good that I changed my mind and hired

a four-horse carriage. It was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy

in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable.

We got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast,

and went bowling over a hard, smooth road, through the summer

loveliness of Switzerland, with near and distant lakes

and mountains before and about us for the entertainment

of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm

the ear. Sometimes there was only the width of the road

between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear

cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable

fish skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow;

and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land

stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant,

and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets,

the peculiarly captivating cottage of Switzerland.

The ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable end

to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home

in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering

eaves far outward. The quaint windows are filled with

little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains,

and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers.

Across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves

and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch,

are elaborate carvings–wreaths, fruits, arabesques,

verses from Scripture, names, dates, etc. The building

is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very

pleasing color. It generally has vines climbing over it.

Set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside,

and it looks ever so cozy and inviting and picturesque,

and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape.

One does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken

upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house–

a house which is aping the town fashions of Germany

and France, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-down thing,

plastered all over on the outside to look like stone,

and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding,

and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf

and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surroundings,

that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a corpse at

a wedding, a puritan in Paradise.

In the course of the morning we passed the spot where Pontius

Pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake.

The legend goes that after the Crucifixion his conscience

troubled him, and he fled from Jerusalem and wandered

about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of

the mind. Eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights

of Mount Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and

crags for years; but rest and peace were still denied him,

so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself.

Presently we passed the place where a man of better odor

was born. This was the children’s friend, Santa Claus,

or St. Nicholas. There are some unaccountable reputations