Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel — John Locke — John Shaqi
Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
Geneva is divided into two sections; one as distinct from the other as
an Indiana cabin is from the cathedral at Cologne. On the one side of
the river, it is the same as the freshly built and lively looking
streets of a new American city. You see the modern cornice on the roofs
and over the windows, the elegant plate glass fronts to the shops, the
massive buildings for the factories, the orthodox basement dwellings in
the main part of the city, and the modern villas with ample grounds
farther out.
This is the new part, the part created by the latter day Swiss, who were
compelled by the reconstruction of Paris to modernize and wipe out the
old to make room for the new. There is less of reverence in a dollar
than in anything else in the world. The owner of a historical old
rookery didn't care a straw for the associations connected with his
premises; what he wanted was rent, and so the quaint old piles were
demolished and new buildings, modeled after the new Paris, went up in
their stead. The uncomfortable old streets were widened into something
like boulevards, the beautifully smooth and clean asphalt pavement took
the place of the wretched old bowlders, and everything that was old, no
matter whether its savor was of the Puritanic Calvin, or the antedating
monk, was bundled out of the way with as little reverence as a
Cromwellian soldier displayed in cleaning out an English or Irish
monastery.
But the other side of the river has escaped the hand of the vandal, and
whoever hungers for the uncomfortable past can find all he wants of it.
The streets are as wretched as the most exacting could desire, and the
houses run up as many stories as you choose, and the old notion of a
building being so high that you have to look twice to get to the top of
it, is well nigh realized. Very like the conductor who was boasting of
the speed of his train:
"Thunder," says he, "we passed Millgrove so fast that the station master
had to call out the telegraph operator to help him ketch a glance at
us."
There are passages so tortuous and cavernous, built for no earthly
purpose that any one can divine now-a-days, buildings like small Alps,
with the quaintest windows, the most absurd staircases, and the most
inconvenient arrangements, shops in passages so dark as to require
artificial light in mid-day, and human habitations in these underground
burrows.
[Sidenote: TOO MUCH MUSIC.]
Old Geneva, like Old Paris, has a musty smell and ancient flavor that is
delightful, if you do not have to live in it.
On the other side you are oppressed with watches and music boxes, the
manufacture of which support the city. In the matter of watches Geneva
is not so absolute as she was, for the inventive Yankee makes a better
watch than the Genevan hand-worker. We do not make so many kinds or so
curious specimens of horology, but for substantial wear and constant
use, the American watch is conceded even by the Genevan to be the best.