ent of the damned to crawl
outside in perpetual hunger and look in through the chinks as little
boys look in through the windows of a London cookshop. With similar
feelings I lately watched through a telescope the small black dots,
which were really men, creeping up the high flanks of Mont Blanc or
Monte Rosa. The eternal snows represented for me the Elysian fields,
into which entrance was sternly forbidden, and I lingered about the spot
with a mixture of pleasure and pain, in the envious contemplation of my
more fortunate companions.

I know there are those who will receive these assertions with civil
incredulity. Some persons assume that every pleasure with which they
cannot sympathise is necessarily affectation, and hold, as a particular
case of that doctrine, that Alpine travellers risk their lives merely
from fashion or desire of notoriety. Others are kind enough to admit
that there is something genuine in the passion, but put it on a level
with the passion for climbing greased poles. They think it derogatory to
the due dignity of Mont Blanc that he should be used as a greased pole,
and assure us that the true pleasures of the Alps are those which are
within reach of the old and the invalids, who can only creep about
villages and along high-roads. I cannot well argue with such detractors
from what I consider a noble sport. As for the first class, it is
reduced almost to a question of veracity. I say that I enjoy being on
the top of a mountain, or, indeed, halfway up a mountain; that climbing
is a pleasure to me, and would be so if no one else climbed and no one
ever heard of my climbing. They reply that they don't believe it. No
more argument is possible than if I were to say that I liked eating
olives, and some one asserted that I really eat them only out of
affectation. My reply would be simply to go on eating olives; and I hope
the reply of mountaineers will be to go on climbing Alps. The other
assault is more intelligible. Our critics admit that we have a pleasure;
but assert that it is a puerile pleasure--that it leads to an irreverent
view of mountain beauty, and to oversight of that which should really
most impress a refined and noble mind. To this I shall only make such an
indirect reply as may result from a frank confession of my own regrets
at giving up the climbing business--perhaps for ever. I am sinking, so
to speak, from the butterfly to the caterpillar stage, and, if the
creeping thing is really the