Mr. Harte found it all “mighty tough” and “mighty rough.” He had wanted, he said in his letter “a little inexpensive simplicity,” but this was too much for anything--a couple of representatives of the _great_ United States, and one of them a New York exquisite, tucked away in a hay mow above the goats and cattle. Obviously, he had not been a mountaineer, fine as had been his tales of the rough life in California. That was something I always wondered at--how Bret Harte could write such splendid touching tales of “hard cases,” being himself so much the reverse of all the characters he depicted. It was the genius of his character that had done it all. Some men take in at a glimpse, and can perfectly describe what others must experience for a lifetime, to be able to tell anything about. We lay awake much of that summer night, in the hay mow, but the “poetry” of the thing was all wasted on Mr. Harte. We heard the solitary watchman of the village, who with his lantern walked about in the darkness, cry to the sleepers: “Twelve o’clock, and all is well.” That solitary watchman’s occupation did touch Mr. Harte. It is indeed a singular life, going around there alone all the night, the towering pinnacles of the rocks on one hand, the depths of the valley and the lake below on the other, the flash of waterfalls close by, the thunder of distant falling avalanches. Never a night in three hundred years but some watchman has gone about the byways of Obstalden with his lantern, calling aloud the hours. A tin cup, and a little mountain rill that laughed its way through the village, afforded Mr. Harte and myself our opportunities for morning toilettes. Mr. Harte’s new clothes had been _pressed_ in the hay-mow, but not always in the right direction. We met the ladies at the breakfast table of the inn. Mr. Harte’s narrative to them of the adventures of the night made a hearty laugh. Never did a breakfast of brown bread and butter, with good coffee, hot milk and wild honey, taste better. The table was set out on the terrace. The blue lake was far, far below us. On its opposite shore, the perpendicular rocks, a mile high, shut in the loveliest water in Switzerland. Up on top of those walls of rock, on a little green plateau, we could see the town of Amden. Nothing like it in the world. Not a horse nor a carriage up there. It is reached by a stone stairway, zigzagging along the face of the rocks. Everything the people buy or sell is lugged up and down this wonderful stairway on peasants’ shoulders. In the afternoon, Mr. Harte’s attention was riveted on a curious procession of row boats, slowly crossing the lake in our direction. One of the boats was entirely covered with garlands and white flowers. It was a village funeral, said our landlord. They don’t have ground enough for a graveyard up there in Amden; so they bury their people this side of the lake.