t so hard
to discover either man, woman, child, or dog whom I would designate as
"typically American," am forced to admit that Jimmie's mental make-up is
perfect as a certain type of the American business man, travelling
extensively in Europe. The real bread of life to Jimmie is the New York
Stock Exchange; but being on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he
brought his fine steel-wire will to bear upon his recreation with as
much nervous force as he ever expended in a deal in Third Avenue or
Union Pacific.

Hence he travels nervously yet deliberately, and views Europe from the
point of view of the American stock market, scoffing at my enthusiasm,
ironical of Bee's most cherished preferences, patient with his wife's
serious love of society, and chivalrously tolerant, as only the American
man can be, of the prejudices of his travelling family.

I notice that he is taking on a certain amount of true culture. He is
broadening. Jimmie is beginning to let his emotions out; however, very
gradually, with a firm, nervous hand on the throttle-valve, with the
sensitive American's fear of ridicule as his steam-gauge.

I watched Jimmie as he first saw the Achensee. The colour came into his
face, his eyes brightened, and he clenched his hands--a sure sign of
feeling in Jimmie.

There was a little white steamboat at the pier. The lake spread out
before us was of the colour which you see when you look down into the
depths of some fine unmounted sapphire at Tiffany's. The pebbles on the
beach under the water looked as if they were in a basin of blueing. I
reached in to take one out, and thoroughly expected to find my hand
stained when I withdrew it. Around the lake arose little hills of the
same beauty and verdure as our Berkshires, with the exception that these
hills possessed a certain purplish, bluish haze with a gray mist over
them, which gave to their colouring the same softness that a woman
imparts to her complexion when she wears white chiffon under a black
lace veil.

I cannot understand what makes the Achensee so blue and the Koenigsee so
green. Chemically analysed, the waters are almost identical, and the
verdure surrounding them is very similar, and yet the Koenigsee is as
green as the Achensee is blue.

A little steamer took us around the edge of the lake, where at the first
landing-place Madame Carreno left us. We could only see the roof of her
cottage in the grove of trees.

There is a new hotel somewhere along the