Returning to Zurich, and going thence to St. Gall, I mounted a diligence, and rode an hour and a half into the hill country, up hill all the way, to a place unheard-of in the guide-books, and unvisited by travellers, unless business or the search for solitude should call them there. It is at least a thousand feet above the lake, of which a distant view is had, and in the midst of beautiful high valleys, green pastures, and thrifty villages, three or four of which are in sight, each with its single church spire or tower. Not a boarding-house was to be found in the place. There is a hotel, but hotels had been my dwelling-place long enough, and now I would have a home, and such a home as the people around me enjoy. In a private family, the village apothecary’s, I learned that, perhaps, a room could be had, and thither I bent my steps. Happily for me, they were willing to take me in, and in a short time the apartments were ready and I was duly installed. My quarters are a parlor and bedroom, on the front of the house, first floor, up stairs over the shop. The floor is uncarpeted, made of various Swiss woods laid in mosaic, in diamond shapes, of three different colors. A large, earthen, polished, white, monument-like thing, gilt at the corniced summit, stands on one side, and I soon learn that it is a stove, the door of which is out in the hall, where the fire is kindled, and now in the middle of August a fire is needed all the time. On the corners of this ornamental as well as useful pile stand two Parian busts, one of Goethe and the other of Schiller. An engraving of Schiller reading one of his poems to his friends hangs on the wall, and a portrait of Columbus, and another of Luther and other celebrities are around me. The windows extend without interruption over the entire length of the room, and a row of flowers in pots are on the sill outside, and embroidered curtains within. The shutters are closed by raising them with a strap, as the windows of a rail-car. A sofa, an easy chair covered with leather, three tables, a divan, and a chair or two, with rugs lying around, and little gems of art with books scattered about, complete the furniture of this perfectly comfortable and delightful room. The walls and ceiling are all panel-work in wood, painted white, and as purely white as the Alpine snows. In the bedroom, the floor, the wall, and ceiling are as in the parlor, only the color is a light salmon, very chaste and clean. The bed has a down comforter on the top of it, and two pillows, with double cases, the inner of figured green silk, showing at the open embroidered end of the outer linen. It is almost too pretty to sleep in, in the dark. Over the head of the bed is a beautiful engraving of Uhland’s “Landlord’s Daughter.” On the stand at the bedside is a little basket of confectionery, a porcelain transparency of the Saviour standing among the clouds and pointing heavenward; a china night-lamp burning with a bowl of water over it,