I ain't ever bored,
on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk. I'm awful
fond of talking when I can get hold of the right kind of a person, ain't
you?"

"I prefer it to any other dissipation."

"That's my notion, too. Now some people like to take a book and sit
down and read, and read, and read, or moon around yawping at the lake or
these mountains and things, but that ain't my way; no, sir, if they like
it, let 'em do it, I don't object; but as for me, talking's what I like.
You been up the Rigi?"

"Yes."

"What hotel did you stop at?"

"Schreiber."

"That's the place!--I stopped there too. FULL of Americans, WASN'T it?
It always is--always is. That's what they say. Everybody says that. What
ship did you come over in?"

"VILLE DE PARIS."

"French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did ... excuse me a minute,
there's some Americans I haven't seen before."

And away he went. He went uninjured, too--I had the murderous impulse to
harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, but as I raised the weapon
the disposition left me; I found I hadn't the heart to kill him, he was
such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.

Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting, with strong
interest, a noble monolith which we were skimming by--a monolith not
shaped by man, but by Nature's free great hand--a massy pyramidal rock
eighty feet high, devised by Nature ten million years ago against the
day when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. The time
came at last, and now this grand remembrancer bears Schiller's name in
huge letters upon its face. Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded
or defiled in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let
himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, and painted all
over it, in blue letters bigger than those in Schiller's name, these
words: "Try Sozodont;" "Buy Sun Stove Polish;" "Helmbold's Buchu;" "Try
Benzaline for the Blood." He was captured and it turned out that he was
an American. Upon his trial the judge said to him:

"You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is privileged
to profane and insult Nature, and, through her, Nature's God, if by
so doing he can put a sordid penny in his pocket. But here the case is
different. Because you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your
sentence light; if you were a native I would deal strenuously with
you. Hear and obey: --You will immediately remove ev