her sort. Very different from the
clergyman on the boat was the old lady at table-d'hote in one of the
hotels on the lake. One would not like to call her a delightfully wicked
old woman, like the Baroness Bernstein; but she had her own witty and
satirical way of regarding the world. She had lived twenty-five years at
Geneva, where people, years ago, coming over the dusty and hot roads
of France, used to faint away when they first caught sight of the Alps.
Believe they don't do it now. She never did; was past the susceptible
age when she first came; was tired of the people. Honest? Why, yes,
honest, but very fond of money. Fine Swiss wood-carving? Yes. You'll get
very sick of it. It's very nice, but I 'm tired of it. Years ago, I sent
some of it home to the folks in England. They thought everything of it;
and it was not very nice, either,--a cheap sort. Moral ideas? I don't
care for moral ideas: people make such a fuss about them lately (this
in reply to her next neighbor, an eccentric, thin man, with bushy hair,
shaggy eyebrows, and a high, falsetto voice, who rallied the witty
old lady all dinner-time about her lack of moral ideas, and accurately
described the thin wine on the table as "water-bewitched"). Why did n't
the baroness go back to England, if she was so tired of Switzerland?
Well, she was too infirm now; and, besides, she did n't like to
trust herself on the railroads. And there were so many new inventions
nowadays, of which she read. What was this nitroglycerine, that exploded
so dreadfully? No: she thought she should stay where she was.

There is little risk of mistaking the Englishman, with or without his
family, who has set out to do Switzerland. He wears a brandy-flask, a
field-glass, and a haversack. Whether he has a silk or soft hat, he is
certain to wear a veil tied round it. This precaution is adopted when he
makes up his mind to come to Switzerland, I think, because he has read
that a veil is necessary to protect the eyes from the snow-glare. There
is probably not one traveler in a hundred who gets among the ice and
snow-fields where he needs a veil or green glasses: but it is well
to have it on the hat; it looks adventurous. The veil and the spiked
alpenstock are the signs of peril. Everybody--almost everybody--has an
alpenstock. It is usually a round pine stick, with an iron spike in one
end. That, also, is a sign of peril. We saw a noble young Briton on the
steamer the other day, who was got up in