if you can,
and expect as little sympathy as would be accorded to that article. Are
you moved to a keen sense of the ridiculous, as a curve in the road
discloses the figures of your elongated party, unused to riding, and
rendered the more grotesque by their mountain-equipment? A laugh
unshared is no laugh at all, so you may as well smother it at once. Does
the scenery through which you are passing awaken emotions of sublimity?
It would be sacrilege to shout out your sentiments to the occupant of
the next mule in such tones as a watchman would employ to cry, "Fire!"
No,--if you are essentially a social creature, there is nothing for it
but to bottle up your sensibilities and await the opportunity for an
explosion when you reach your inn.

Something like this result occurred, I remember, on the evening of that
very day, when Mademoiselle, who, under the charge of Michel, led the
van, met me at the hotel at Martigny, at which place she had of course
arrived a little in advance. We were not usually more demonstrative in
our manners than is customary among New-England women, but the moment I
could alight we rushed into each other's embrace, regardless of a crowd
of astonished porters and guides, mutually insisting, by way of apology,
that it seemed as if we had not met for a year.

Having dwelt upon this peculiar isolation experienced by the Alpine
traveller, it may be conjectured, that, when the boy, Auguste, drew my
bridle through his arm, I felt very much as Robinson Crusoe did when he
was joined by his man Friday. Auguste and I soon became friends. He was
a large, round-faced, mild-eyed youth, who, the instant the excitement
of securing his employment was past, subsided into a soft, even pace
like that of a dog. Now and then, too, he looked up at the mule and me,
precisely as a dog, accompanying his master, looks up to see if all is
right.

I did not talk to him at first. His mere presence was satisfaction
enough. After a while we grew more sociable. He spoke a French _patois_.
So did I. His was peculiar to the province,--mine wholly original,--but
both answered the purpose of communication, and so were satisfactory.
He had the essential characteristic of his profession,--he was one of
the oily-tongued tribe, simple as he seemed, and I the willing victim;
for I am confident that I straightened in my saddle, and talked more
glibly than ever in the language peculiar to myself, on the strength of
his _naive_ surprise at