_August 30, 1879._--When we got back from the Rigi to Bocken, Mr. Harte proposed that we go for a week to Obstalden, that picturesque hamlet hung above the Wallensee. We ourselves had spent parts of three summers there. It is indeed a characteristic Alpine village. It is on the side of a mountain. The wonderful little Wallensee, blue as a summer’s sky, lies 2,000 feet below it. Behind it rise majestic mountains. It is all green grass up there, even up to the very doors and windows of the brown, hewn log houses. A little white highway winds up to the village from the lake, while the rest of the roads are simple, narrow goat paths. They lead about over the grass from house to house, and from the village up to the higher Alps, where the village boys herd goats and cows from sunrise till evening. The peasant women all weave silk, and this necessitates the great number of long windows in their ham-brown cabins. The men are almost as brown as their houses, and live to be a hundred years old. I never saw so many _very_ old people in my life. They live on bread and milk and cheese, with a little sour wine. Some of these centenarians are Alpine guides, and I have had them carry my overcoat and haversack and escort me up high mountains with the nimbleness of a boy of twenty. I was ashamed to have them lug things for me, a member of the Alpine Club, but they insisted. American tourists don’t find Obstalden. The hamlet is kept a close secret among a few Swiss and Germans, who want only picturesque scenes and _very_ simple life. It was a great favor that a friend told me about it, and got the little village inn to always give me the refusal of a room or two. I had learned Mr. Harte’s tastes, after his coming to Bocken. They were not for the _utterly_ simple life of mountain villages, after all, and my wife and I protested against his going to Obstalden. But go he would and we had to accompany him. When we got there, the little hotel was overflowing with people. It held but a dozen guests. The keeper of the inn offered to sit up that night, and let Miss C---- and my wife have his room. But at last he thought of the village pastor’s wife, and she took in the two ladies. He tried to get a room in a peasant’s house for Mr. Harte and me. It was impossible. We could walk about all night, at the imminent risk of falling off a couple of thousand feet or so, or we could sleep in a peasant’s hayloft. Many of Mark Twain’s famous “Chamois” were likely to be hopping around in that little hayloft. Mr. Harte hesitated a little--wished he had never heard of Obstalden. He wore one of his newest, swellest suits, and the situation “gave him pause.” At last he nimbly climbed up the ladder. I followed, and without much undressing in the dark, we were soon under a big coverlet, where to me, for a novelty, the sweet hay was better than any sheets ever made.