ony of this wandering
rack-heap of unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton would not be
allowed to testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility,
and its word could not be believed on oath, and this was probably one
of them. However, the incident is valuable as preserving to us a curious
sample of the quaint laws of evidence of that remote time--a time so
remote, so far back toward the beginning of original idiocy, that the
difference between a bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as
yet so slight that we may say with all confidence that it didn't really
exist.

During several afternoons I have been engaged in an interesting, maybe
useful, piece of work--that is to say, I have been trying to make the
mighty Jungfrau earn her living--earn it in a most humble sphere, but on
a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't
do anything in a small way with her size and style. I have been trying
to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as
they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the
time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles of her and to
the people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there.

Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau's aspect is that of a spotless
desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. But by mid-afternoon some
elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose
presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time,
began to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming surface. At
first there is only one shadow; later there are two. Toward 4 P.M. the
other day I was gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to notice
that shadow No. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape of
the human profile. By four the back of the head was good, the military
cap was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip
sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight
aggressively forward from the chin.

At four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the
altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge
buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer
very well for a shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet
sweetheart who had stolen out there right before everybody to pillow his
head on the Virgin's white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to
her in