that we did
not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. I said to myself, "This
confounded old thing's aground again, sure,"--and opened Baedeker to
see if I could run across any remedy for these annoying interruptions.
I soon found a sentence which threw a dazzling light upon the matter.
It said, "The Gorner Glacier travels at an average rate of a little less
than an inch a day." I have seldom felt so outraged. I have seldom had
my confidence so wantonly betrayed. I made a small calculation: One inch
a day, say thirty feet a year; estimated distance to Zermatt, three and
one-eighteenth miles. Time required to go by glacier, A LITTLE OVER FIVE
HUNDRED YEARS! I said to myself, "I can WALK it quicker--and before I
will patronize such a fraud as this, I will do it."

When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part of this
glacier--the central part--the lightning-express part, so to speak--was
not due in Zermatt till the summer of 2378, and that the baggage, coming
along the slow edge, would not arrive until some generations later, he
burst out with:

"That is European management, all over! An inch a day--think of that!
Five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles! But I am not a bit
surprised. It's a Catholic glacier. You can tell by the look of it. And
the management."

I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a
Catholic canton.

"Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris. "It's all the
same. Over here the government runs everything--so everything's slow;
slow, and ill-managed. But with us, everything's done by private
enterprise--and then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend
on it. I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab
once--you'd see it take a different gait from this."

I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough
to justify it.

"He'd MAKE trade," said Harris. "That's the difference between
governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do. Tom
Scott would take all the trade; in two years Gorner stock would go to
two hundred, and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers
under the hammer for taxes." After a reflective pause, Harris added, "A
little less than an inch a day; a little less than an INCH, mind you.
Well, I'm losing my reverence for glaciers."

I was feeling much the same way myself. I have traveled by canal-boat,
ox-wagon, raft, and by the Ephesus and Smyr