_July 1, 1877._--Last week there was some talk among the prominent people here, including the few Americans, of having a public reception for General Grant. Knowing that he was stopping at Luzern, I went to see him for the committee. In a little lake-excursion near to the Rigi, it happened that I was on the same boat with him. The seats on the deck of the steamer were filled with tourists, gazing in wonder at the inspiring scenery we were passing in the bay of Uri. The water is two thousand feet deep, the lake a wonderful blue, and the dark, majestic mountains near by, a contrast to the slopes of snow and the ice fields a little further off. It was summer, but the day was dark and cool. “Where is the General?” I said to General Badeau, who was traveling with him. [Illustration: Lake Luzern--Tell’s Chapel.--_Pages 49 and 128._] “Do you see that man sitting down there at the right, alone, with his coat collar turned up?” I went nearer, and recognized the familiar features. But to me, he looked none at all like the General Grant of war times, the one I had seen on critical battlefields. He wore a black cylinder hat, his overcoat collar, turned up, hid half his face, he sat earnest and speechless with arms folded, apparently barely glancing at the mighty scenes the vessel was hurrying past--scenes that were exciting exclamations of wonder from half the people on the deck. General Badeau pronounced my name, but General Grant did not, at first, remember me. When I recalled the time I brought the dispatches from Sherman to City Point, and the long talk we had together in the little back room of his cabin, about Sherman’s army, he brightened up, interested himself, and seemed glad to talk of old war days. I think not one reference was made to the scenery we were passing. I must think, too, he was getting tired of all the attentions heaped upon him by European cities, for he preferred, when I spoke of it, that the Zurich people should do nothing in the way of receiving him. “Look at that great, foolish lot of people hurrying to be first at the gangway,” he remarked to me, as the steamer turned landwards at Luzern. “They might as well sit still; nine times out of ten, hurry helps nobody--the boat stays at the landing, everybody will get off, and to-morrow it will be all the same who is off first.” I have often thought of that remark. His taking time for things may have been one of the keys to his success. We were the very last to go ashore. That evening at the Schweizerhof, I had some pleasant conversation with him again. He regretted that he was not at the White House, just a few hours, to put the deserved quietus on the strikers in Pennsylvania who were shamelessly destroying other people’s property. One hundred and twenty-five locomotives and ten million dollars worth of railroad stock were destroyed at Pittsburg in one night. “That is what an army will be wanted for yet, in our country,” he added, “an army to make ourselves behave.”