ge of old houses below on the lake,
one overhanging towards the point; and the promontory, finished by a
willow drooping to the water. Beyond, in hazy light, over the lucid
green of the lake, are mountains whose masses of rock seem soft and
sculptured. To the right, at the foot of the lake, tower the great snowy
mountains, the cone of the Schreckhorn, the square top of the Eiger, the
Jungfrau, just showing over the hills, and the Blumlisalp rising into
heaven clear and silvery.

What can one do in such a spot, but swim in the lake, lie on the shore,
and watch the passing steamers and the changing light on the mountains?
Down at the wharf, when the small boats put off for the steamer, one can
well entertain himself. The small boat is an enormous thing, after all,
and propelled by two long, heavy sweeps, one of which is pulled, and the
other pushed. The laboring oar is, of course, pulled by a woman; while
her husband stands up in the stern of the boat, and gently dips the
other in a gallant fashion. There is a boy there, whom I cannot make
out,--a short, square boy, with tasseled skull-cap, and a face that
never changes its expression, and never has any expression to change; he
may be older than these hills; he looks old enough to be his own father:
and there is a girl, his counterpart, who might be, judging her age by
her face, the mother of both of them. These solemn old-young people are
quite busy doing nothing about the wharf, and appear to be afflicted
with an undue sense of the responsibility of life. There is a
beer-garden here, where several sober couples sit seriously drinking
their beer. There are some horrid old women, with the parchment skin and
the disagreeable necks. Alone, in a window of the castle, sits a lady
at her work, who might be the countess; only, I am sorry, there is no
countess, nothing but a frau, in that old feudal dwelling. And there is
a foreigner, thinking how queer it all is. And while he sits there, the
melodious bell in the church-tower rings its evening song.

BAVARIA.

AMERICAN IMPATIENCE

We left Switzerland, as we entered it, in a rain,--a kind of double
baptism that may have been necessary, and was certainly not too heavy a
price to pay for the privileges of the wonderful country. The wind blew
freshly, and swept a shower over the deck of the little steamboat,
on board of which we stepped from the shabby little pier and town of
Romanshorn. After the other Swiss lakes, Con