stance is tame, except at
the southern end, beyond which rise the Appenzell range and the wooded
peaks of the Bavarian hills. Through the dash of rain, and under the
promise of a magnificent rainbow,--rainbows don't mean anything in
Switzerland, and have no office as weather-prophets, except to assure
you, that, as it rains to-day, so it will rain tomorrow,--we skirted the
lower bend of the lake,--and at twilight sailed into the little harbor
of Lindau, through the narrow entrance between the piers, on one of
which is a small lighthouse, and on the other sits upright a gigantic
stone lion,--a fine enough figure of a Bavarian lion, but with a
comical, wide-awake, and expectant expression of countenance, as if
he might bark right out at any minute, and become a dog. Yet in the
moonlight, shortly afterward, the lion looked very grand and stately,
as he sat regarding the softly plashing waves, and the high, drifting
clouds, and the old Roman tower by the bridge which connects the Island
of Lindau with the mainland, and thinking perhaps, if stone lions ever
do think, of the time when Roman galleys sailed on Lake Constance, and
when Lindau was an imperial town with a thriving trade.

On board the little steamer was an American, accompanied by two ladies,
and traveling, I thought, for their gratification, who was very anxious
to get on faster than he was able to do,--though why any one should
desire to go fast in Europe I do not know. One easily falls into the
habit of the country, to take things easily, to go when the slow German
fates will, and not to worry one's self beforehand about times and
connections. But the American was in a fever of impatience, desirous, if
possible, to get on that night. I knew he was from the Land of the Free
by a phrase I heard him use in the cars: he said, "I'll bet a dollar."
Yet I must flatter myself that Americans do not always thus betray
themselves. I happened, on the Isle of Wight, to hear a bland landlord
"blow up" his glib-tongued son because the latter had not driven a
stiffer bargain with us for the hire of a carriage round the island.

"Didn't you know they were Americans?" asks the irate father. "I knew it
at once."

"No," replies young hopeful: "they didn't say GUESS once."

And straightway the fawning-innkeeper returns to us, professing, with
his butter-lips, the greatest admiration of all Americans, and the
intensest anxiety to serve them, and all for pure good-will. The Englis