ng the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish
haze seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so
shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the
shadows lay. Apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination,
nothing real about it. The tint was green, slightly varying shades of
it, but mainly very dark. The sun was down--as far as that barrier was
concerned, but not for the Jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond
the gateway. She was a roaring conflagration of blinding white.

It is said the Fridolin (the old Fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a
missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. He was an Irishman, son
of an Irish king--there were thirty thousand kings reigning in County
Cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. It got so that they
could not make a living, there was so much competition and wages got cut
so. Some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife and little
children to feed, and not a crust in the place. At last a particularly
severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of them were reduced
to mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest
weather, standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for
alms. Indeed, they would have been obliged to emigrate or starve but for
a fortunate idea of Prince Fridolin's, who started a labor-union, the
first one in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. He thus
won the general gratitude, and they wanted to make him emperor--emperor
over them all--emperor of County Cork, but he said, No, walking delegate
was good enough for him. For behold! he was modest beyond his years,
and keen as a whip. To this day in Germany and Switzerland, where
St. Fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him
affectionately as the first walking delegate.

The first walk he took was into France and Germany, missionarying--for
missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All
you had to do was to cure the savage's sick daughter by a "miracle"--a
miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance--and
immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes
with a new convert's enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself
easy, now. He would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation
himself. Charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate.

Yes, there were great missionaries in those days, fo