CHAPTER VI.

EN ROUTE.

"THE good old times" of Carlyle and his retrospective admirers are dead, and have taken many of their unpalatable truths to the grave with them. No one is more likely to have this brought to his notice than the traveller of to-day. In spite of poets and modern philosophers, we dare to be thankful that we have the advantage over our predecessors and can take comfort on the wing. In this matter" décidément à nous est le pompon." We have eschewed the legacy they left us of dust, mud, close and dirty diligences, wretched roads, impracticable passes, bad food, extortionate servants, thievish landlords, clumsy and drunken drivers, and all the riff-raff that used to infest the highway fifty years ago. Your modern traveller is a very Sybarite, and the merest creature of luxury and refinement, compared with his forefathers. Hair-breadth escapes and perilous dangers are to the great majority only traditions, or to be found in the works of Dr. Livingstone and Captain Speke. The tourist glides along from station to station in a monotonous and unpicturesque way. He is seated in a comfortable arm

chair, and looks out upon a rapidly changing prospect through the clearest of plate-glass. If he is n't beguiled into falling asleep, he is an exceptional case. When our grandsires journeyed, the word meant something. They bundled themselves up, made their wills, and prepared for the worst. If they reached home in safety, their friends gave them an ovation such as the Romans offered to Cæ

sar.

Nowadays, one who has only travelled from Paris to Lucerne, for example, has nothing whatever to say, and, in fact, has very little impression of any sort left upon his mind. Four hundred miles in sixteen hours through a pleasant country, the broad fields of France opening out on either hand, and that is all. One day at Paris, the next at Lucerne, and the whole interval a confused whirl of sound, motion, chatter, with an occasional stoppage to eat and drink. Veteran tourists go to sleep; younger ones read the last novel or scan the guide-book, and those who cannot kill time in either of these ways, do as much conversation as the noise of the carwheels will let them. As all the world knows, the French are very clever talkers, and any little incident will produce chatter enough to turn a windmill. They are always in a bright, cheerful atmosphere, and compared with other nations, they are like the foam of champagne to the wine itself. Commend me to a Frenchwoman for conversation. When constrained to be silent, she is as uncomfort

able as St. Lawrence on his gridiron. Let the words once begin to flow forth, and her whole demeanor changes. The plain and unattractive female becomes full of ladylike graces, and shines the queen of the hour. In the course of ten minutes she will say a score of piquant and witty things, and keep every one around her in a state of the most pleasurable excitement. And then the fluency and rapidity of her speech! I never heard women chatter so fast as in France, or so much. They have a witty proverb in that country, "In what month do the women talk the least? The month of February, because it is the shortest." It is said that the good Father André, an excellent man, but disposed to tell unwholesome truths, and jump at conclusions, remarked quaintly from the pulpit, "My brethren, Christ appeared first to women after the resurrection, that the fact might be sooner and more widely known."

But one incident occurred to vary the routine of my journey. In one apartment of a carriage were only two people, a man and a woman. At one of the stations, a hand was waved from the window. and the blushing face of the latter was seen with signs of great distress. The conductor answers her signal and runs to the side of the car.

"Oh, the miserable fellow to insult an unprotected lady! Would you believe that Monsieur had the impudence to say to me "—

Here a burst of tears and sobs checked her voice.

"Well, Madam, what did he say? Be calm, if you please, for the train is ready to start."

"He said—he s-s-said that he would give me a mahogany bureau if I would agree to m-m-m-marry him. Oh, the villain! the r-r-rascal. Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu!"

"You can make a complaint against him, if you wish," said the guard, producing his tablets and preparing to take down an elaborate description of persons and places, when he was not a little discomfited to hear the fair traveller remark in an undertone, as if speaking to herself,

"Oh, the brute! mahogany! If it had only been rosewood, now!" Thereupon the conductor shut up his papers and left the plaintiff to finish her case as she best might.

The present system of journeying is the natural offspring of an avaricious age. Nowadays everything is based on a solid foundation of cash. Men travel thousands of miles to make money, and then take infinite pleasure in travelling thousands of miles farther to spend it. And so a healthy and vigorous circulation is kept up: we rub each other's angles smooth in the social mill, and the sharp friction only polishes us, till modern civilization can see her face in our own. Here we go up, up, up; and there we go down, down, down; and the dollars fly, and the world rolls round, and we are all whisked along, we hardly know whither. Riches can do anything, and this age has proved it. What are

the elements, or precipices, or masses of rocks, or towering Alps, when pitted against the "slave of the dark and dirty mine!" The men of this generation have proved their cupidity, and Switzerland has received and is now receiving the benefit of it. The people are a little tainted with the worship of the golden calf, and will descend as deep and mount as high as any one for it. Everybody has heard the story of the dispute between the French and the Swiss officer. Said the former, "Your people fight for wealth, mine for glory." "Each fights for what they are the most in want of," was the well put retort. And this is certainly true as a national trait. One can't be here a day without seeing a dozen examples of it. Offer a Swiss baby a piece of gilded gingerbread and a sou, and he will drop the former and hug the latter with infantile parsimony.

I was amused at the style in which a similar view was expressed in a work I lately read. Said the speaker, they were talking of attempting the top of some monstrously high and break-neck peak, "Give me money enough, and I will go up every possible mountain in Switzerland. I would write beforehand to all the guides to meet me, say at Geneva, and engage them for the season. would put them into uniform with cocked hats. I would march up the great Aletsch glacier with a brass band, and be carried to the top of Mont Blanc in a stuffed chair. I would do every great ascent

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