A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

things came up at six-fifteen; I got a pair on a new plan.

They were merely a pair of white ruffle-cuffed absurdities,

hitched together at the top with a narrow band, and they did

not come quite down to my knees. They were pretty enough,

but they made me feel like two people, and disconnected

at that. The man must have been an idiot that got himself

up like that, to rough it in the Swiss mountains.

The shirt they brought me was shorter than the drawers,

and hadn’t any sleeves to it–at least it hadn’t anything

more than what Mr. Darwin would call “rudimentary” sleeves;

these had “edging” around them, but the bosom was

ridiculously plain. The knit silk undershirt they brought

me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing;

it opened behind, and had pockets in it to put your

shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine,

and so I found it a sort of uncomfortable garment.

They gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me

an ulster suitable for a giraffe. I had to tie my collar on,

because there was no button behind on that foolish little shirt

which I described a while ago.

When I was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, I was too loose

in some places and too tight in others, and altogether I

felt slovenly and ill-conditioned. However, the people

at the table d’ho^te were no better off than I was;

they had everybody’s clothes but their own on. A long

stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail

of it following me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or

my drawers, though I described them as well as I was able.

I gave them to the chambermaid that night when I went

to bed, and she probably found the owner, for my own

things were on a chair outside my door in the morning.

There was a lovable English clergyman who did

not get to the table d’ho^te at all. His breeches

had turned up missing, and without any equivalent.

He said he was not more particular than other people,

but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without

any breeches was almost sure to excite remark.

CHAPTER XXXVI

[The Fiendish Fun of Alp-climbing]

We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell

began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from

the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it

takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation

through his head. Most church-bells in the world

are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping

sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin,

but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one

that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening

in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its

excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every

citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be

any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no

family in America without a clock, and consequently there

is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful

sounds that issues from our steeples. There is much more

profanity in America on Sunday than is all in the other six

days of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter

and malignant character than the week-day profanity, too.

It is produced by the cracked-pot clangor of the cheap

church-bells.

We build our churches almost without regard to cost;

we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we

gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything

we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by

putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it,

giving some the headache, others St. Vitus’s dance,

and the rest the blind staggers.

An American village at ten o’clock on a summer Sunday is

the quietest and peacefulest and holiest thing in nature;

but it is a pretty different thing half an hour later.

Mr. Poe’s poem of the “Bells” stands incomplete to this day;