“There is your story,” I said to Mr. Harte--“the wonderful stairway--the lake funeral--the town on the high rocks.” “Yes--all right,” he answered; “but, somehow, I never have luck with material I don’t find out for myself. I must suggest it myself.” I recalled Bayard Taylor’s saying, “there is no satisfaction in even a pint of hot water which has been heated by somebody else.” I am afraid I heated this water, not very hot. The story will never be written. That evening we visited the “goat village,” not far away, and watched hundreds and hundreds of goats, led by a young mountaineer, with a great bunch of Alpine roses tied to his staff, and a wreath of roses on his hat. He was coming down from the grassy slopes of a mountain. He was whistling and singing all the way. It was a picturesque sight. The “goat village” is composed of scores of little huts or pens, each one big enough for a single goat. It was interesting to see how each goat knew its own hut among the many, and hurried into it to be milked. In a very few days Mr. Harte had had enough of Alpine simplicity, though we had secured a room in the inn. Far down below us on the lake lay pretty Wesen. It looked more civilized, and he would try it there. When he was shown his room in the Wesen inn, and strolled into the little drawing-room, what was his surprise to notice lying among the books on the table, “the _Works of Bret Harte_.” This was fame--away off in an Alpine village of Switzerland to find his name was known, his books read. When he told me, I recalled that other first night in San Francisco--the applauding assembly--the unknown poet out in the street in the dark. Mr. Harte soon came back to us at Bocken, and on the 26th we accompanied him on his way to his home in Germany, as far as the Falls of the Rhine. But we stopped first in Zurich. As it was his birthday, we had a little good-bye dinner together in the Tonhalle by the lake, and did all we could for his “health” with a bottle of “Mumm’s extra dry.” That he might be right over the Rhine Falls by moonlight, the host of the Laufen Castle gave him the room with the balconies above the water. It was beautiful, but the noise of the falls kept Harte awake all night. In the morning we said good-bye and parted, he for Crefeld via the Black Forest, and we for Bocken. Yesterday I got this letter from him: “CREFELD, Aug. 27, 1879.