an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies, and
quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most of our attention to
abusing each other for the stupidity of deserting the railway-track. We
sat with our backs to the precipice, because what little wind there was
came from that quarter. At some time or other the fog thinned a little;
we did not know when, for we were facing the empty universe and the
thinness could not show; but at last Harris happened to look around, and
there stood a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been.
One could faintly discern the windows and chimneys, and a dull blur of
lights. Our first emotion was deep, unutterable gratitude, our next was
a foolish rage, born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been
visible three-quarters of an hour while we sat there in those cold
puddles quarreling.

Yes, it was the Rigi-Kulm hotel--the one that occupies the extreme
summit, and whose remote little sparkle of lights we had often seen
glinting high aloft among the stars from our balcony away down yonder
in Lucerne. The crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the
surly reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times, but by
mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness and servility
we finally got them to show us to the room which our boy had engaged for
us.

We got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was preparing we
loafed forsakenly through a couple of vast cavernous drawing-rooms,
one of which had a stove in it. This stove was in a corner, and densely
walled around with people. We could not get near the fire, so we moved
at large in the artic spaces, among a multitude of people who sat
silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering--thinking what fools they were
to come, perhaps. There were some Americans and some Germans, but one
could see that the great majority were English.

We lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd, to see
what was going on. It was a memento-magazine. The tourists were eagerly
buying all sorts and styles of paper-cutters, marked "Souvenir of the
Rigi," with handles made of the little curved horn of the ostensible
chamois; there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things,
similarly marked. I was going to buy a paper-cutter, but I believed
I could remember the cold comfort of the Rigi-Kulm without it, so I
smothered the impulse.

Supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed--but first, as Mr.