to fatigue us. We grew very tired of seeing wooden
quails and chickens picking and strutting around clock-faces,
and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the
alleged chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying
upon them in family groups, or peering alertly up
from behind them. The first day, I would have
bought a hundred and fifty of these clocks if I had
the money—and I did buy three —but
on the third day the disease had run its course, I
had convalesced, and was in the market once more—trying
to sell. However, I had no luck; which was just
as well, for the things will be pretty enough, no
doubt, when I get them home.
For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock;
now here I was, at last, right in the creature’s
home; so wherever I went that distressing “HOO’hoo!
HOO’hoo! HOO’hoo!” was always
in my ears. For a nervous man, this was a fine
state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler than
others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly,
and aggravating as the “HOO’hoo”
of a cuckoo clock, I think. I bought one, and
am carrying it home to a certain person; for I have
always said that if the opportunity ever happened,
I would do that man an ill turn. What I meant,
was, that I would break one of his legs, or something
of that sort; but in Lucerne I instantly saw that
I could impair his mind. That would be more lasting,
and more satisfactory every way. So I bought
the cuckoo clock; and if I ever get home with it,
he is “my meat,” as they say in the mines.
I thought of another candidate—a book-reviewer
whom I could name if I wanted to—but after
thinking it over, I didn’t buy him a clock.
I couldn’t injure his mind.
We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which
span the green and brilliant Reuss just below where
it goes plunging and hurrahing out of the lake.
These rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive
things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely
and inspiriting water. They contain two or three
hundred queer old pictures, by old Swiss masters—old
boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence
of art.
The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to
the eye, for the water is very clear. The parapets
in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers
of all ages. One day I thought I would stop and
see a fish caught. The result brought back to
my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which I had
not thought of before for twelve years. This
one:
THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY’S
When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents
in Washington, in the winter of ’67, we were
coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight,
in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp
fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the
opposite direction. “This is lucky!
You are Mr. Riley, ain’t you?”
Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate
person in the republic. He stopped, looked his
man over from head to foot, and finally said:
Copyrights
A Tramp Abroad from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
