r, he replies, in the very words
of 'Peaks and Passes,' that the sunrise was "indescribable," and then,
like the same inspired volume, enlarges freely on the appetite of his
guides. Then he dines, and then he tells us that what he has really
gained from his climb is entire faith in the efficacy of his little box
for preventing all injury from sun or from snow. He is a little proud,
too, to have done the peak in twenty minutes less time than Jones, and
at ten shillings less cost. Altogether, it must be confessed, the Alpine
Clubbist is not an imaginative man. His one grief in life seems to be
the failure of his new portable cooking apparatus, and he pronounces
"Liebig's Extract" to be the great discovery of the age. But such as he
is, solid, practical, slightly stupid, he is the hero of the Alpine
hotel.

At such an elevation the religious developement of the British mind
becomes strangely jerky and irregular. The arrival of Sunday is suddenly
revealed to the group round the breakfast-table by the severity with
which the spinster's eye is fixed on an announcement over the stove that
the English service in the hotel is at ten o'clock. But the announcement
is purely speculative. The landlord "hopes" there will be service, and
plunges again into the kitchen. Profane sounds of fiddling and dancing
reach the ear from an outbuilding where the guides and the maids are
celebrating the day by a dance. The spinster is in earnest, but the
insuperable difficulty lies in the non-existence of a parson. The Indian
civilian suggests that we should adopt the naval usage, and that the
senior layman read prayers. But the attorney is the senior layman, and
he objects to such a muddling of the professions. The young Oxford
undergraduate tells his little tale of a service on board ship where the
major, unversed in such matters, began with the churching service, and
ended with the office for the burial of the dead. Then he withers
beneath the stony stare of the British mother, who is reading her
"lessons" in the corner. At last there is a little buzz of excitement,
and every eye is fixed upon the quiet-looking traveller in a brown
shooting-coat and a purple tie, who is chipping his egg and imbibing his
coffee in silence and unconsciousness. The spinster is sure that the
stranger is Mr. Smith. The attorney doubts whether such a remarkable
preacher would go about in such a costume. The British mother solves the
whole difficulty by walking straig