e to come to the opening of a new
hotel, erected by him at a mountain spa of great resort, that he himself
alluded to it.

The hotel was a wonderful affair, even for those days, and Rutli's
outlay of capital convinced me that by this time he must have made the
"mooch money" he coveted. Something of this was in my mind when we sat
by the window of his handsomely furnished private office, overlooking
the pines of a Californian canyon. I asked him if the scenery was like
Switzerland.

"Ach! no!" he replied; "but I vill puild a hotel shoost like dis dare."

"Is that a part of your revenge?" I asked, with a laugh.

"Ah! so! a bart."

I felt relieved; a revenge so practical did not seem very malicious or
idiotic. After a pause he puffed contemplatively at his pipe, and then
said, "I dell you somedings of dot story now."

He began. I should like to tell it in his own particular English, mixed
with American slang, but it would not convey the simplicity of the
narrator. He was the son of a large family who had lived for centuries
in one of the highest villages in the Bernese Oberland. He attained his
size and strength early, but with a singular distaste to use them in
the rough regular work on the farm, although he was a great climber and
mountaineer, and, what was at first overlooked as mere boyish fancy, had
an insatiable love and curious knowledge of plants and flowers. He knew
the haunts of Edelweiss, Alpine rose, and blue gentian, and had brought
home rare and unknown blossoms from under the icy lips of glaciers.
But as he did this when his time was supposed to be occupied in looking
after the cows in the higher pastures and making cheeses, there was
trouble in that hard-working, practical family. A giant with the tastes
and disposition of a schoolgirl was an anomaly in a Swiss village.
Unfortunately again, he was not studious; his record in the village
school had been on a par with his manual work, and the family had not
even the consolation of believing that they were fostering a genius. In
a community where practical industry was the highest virtue, it was not
strange, perhaps, that he was called "lazy" and "shiftless;" no one knew
the long climbs and tireless vigils he had undergone in remote solitudes
in quest of his favorites, or, knowing, forgave him for it. Abstemious,
frugal, and patient as he was, even the crusts of his father's table
were given him grudgingly. He often went hungry rather than ask the
bread