The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth — John Shaqi
The Letters of Her Mother to ElizabethTrowbridge, W. R. H. (William Rutherford Hayes)
General
The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth
Trowbridge, W. R. H. (William Rutherford Hayes)
Epistolary fiction; Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
I tried to discover a blush somewhere in my veins when we stood in the
hall of the hotel, but somehow I couldn't find one. Fortunately for my
vanity we got on to the steamboat without being recognised, and I made
a mental vow that I would never employ a Taunton seamstress again. The
Italian boy with the monkey and the post-cards that we saw the first day
we arrived, and whom Blanche declared was a nobleman in disguise, was on
board. He went second-class, and was talking to a Swiss peasant with
goitre just below us. The monkey travelled first all the way to
Alpnacht, for the steamboat people didn't dare touch it; it ate apples
at Blanche's feet when it wasn't frightening people out of their wits by
bounding about the deck. The disguised nobleman, who can't be more than
seventeen, recognised us, and gave such a smile and bow! Blanche put a
franc into the tin cup round the monkey's neck, and when we got off at
Stanz the boy brushed off the gangplank before we stepped on it, with
his cap, though the plank was spotless. As Blanche said, it gave her
quite a Sir-Walter-Raleigh-Queen-Elizabeth-and-the-Cloak feeling, and we
declared he was the most picturesque tramp we had ever seen, but Sir
Charles, who hasn't a scrap of romance in him, said he looked as if he
belonged to an Anarchist Society.
Stanz is a funny little town, and people only come to it to leave it.
Some Germans with ropes and pick-axes over their shoulders, and who
looked as if they meant business, got off at Stanz, and as one makes the
ascent of Titlis from here, we concluded that was their destination. Sir
Charles made us walk to the little _platz_ to see the statue to Arnold
von Winkelreid, but we preferred Tell's at Altdorf. The funicular to the
top of the Stanzerhorn makes one feel goose-pimply all over; it is not
only steep, but when you get near the top you look out of the car window
over a sheer precipice of two thousand feet. There are two cars attached
to an endless cable, and while one creeps up the mountain like a horrid
antediluvian bug the other crawls down. If the cable should break, one
would catapult little Stanz to atoms and the other would Jules Verne
itself to the top of the Stanzerhorn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account