A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp

with you and stay.” Then it was the guide-boards: “In

a Protestant canton you couldn’t get lost if you wanted to,

but you never see a guide-board in a Catholic canton.”

Next, “You never see any flower-boxes in the windows,

here–never anything but now and then a cat–a torpid one;

but you take a Protestant canton: windows perfectly lovely

with flowers–and as for cats, there’s just acres of them.

These folks in this canton leave a road to make itself,

and then fine you three francs if you ‘trot’ over it–

as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road.”

Next about the goiter: “THEY talk about goiter!–I haven’t

seen a goiter in this whole canton that I couldn’t put

in a hat.”

He had growled at everything, but I judged it would puzzle

him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier.

I intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly

discontent: “You ought to see them in the Protestant cantons.”

This irritated me. But I concealed the feeling, and asked:

“What is the matter with this one?”

“Matter? Why, it ain’t in any kind of condition.

They never take any care of a glacier here. The moraine

has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty.”

“Why, man, THEY can’t help that.”

“THEY? You’re right. That is, they WON’T. They could

if they wanted to. You never see a speck of dirt

on a Protestant glacier. Look at the Rhone glacier.

It is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think.

If this was a Protestant glacier you wouldn’t see it looking

like this, I can tell you.”

“That is nonsense. What would they do with it?”

“They would whitewash it. They always do.”

I did not believe a word of this, but rather than have

trouble I let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue

with a bigot. I even doubted if the Rhone glacier WAS

in a Protestant canton; but I did not know, so I could

not make anything by contradicting a man who would

probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence.

About nine miles from St. Nicholas we crossed a bridge

over the raging torrent of the Visp, and came to a log

strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure

people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet

high and into the river. Three children were approaching;

one of them, a little girl, about eight years old,

was running; when pretty close to us she stumbled and fell,

and her feet shot under the rail of the fence and for a

moment projected over the stream. It gave us a sharp shock,

for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted

steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility;

but she managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing.

We went forward and examined the place and saw the long

tracks which her feet had made in the dirt when they

darted over the verge. If she had finished her trip she

would have struck some big rocks in the edge of the water,

and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream

among the half-covered boulders and she would have been

pounded to pulp in two minutes. We had come exceedingly

near witnessing her death.

And now Harris’s contrary nature and inborn selfishness

were striking manifested. He has no spirit of self-denial.

He began straight off, and continued for an hour,

to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed.

I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was;

just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about

anybody else. I had noticed that trait in him, over and

over again. Often, of course, it was mere heedlessness,

mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have been

the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard

to bar on that account–and after all, its bottom,

its groundwork, was selfishness. There is no avoiding

that conclusion. In the instance under consideration,