it? It always is--always is. That's what they say.
Everybody says that. What ship did you come over in?"

"VILLE DE PARIS."

"French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did ... excuse me
a minute, there's some Americans I haven't seen before."

And away he went. He went uninjured, too--I had the murderous
impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock,
but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me;
I found I hadn't the heart to kill him, he was such
a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.

Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting,
with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were
skimming by--a monolith not shaped by man, but by Nature's
free great hand--a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high,
devised by Nature ten million years ago against the day
when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument.
The time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer
bears Schiller's name in huge letters upon its face.
Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled
in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let
himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys,
and painted all over it, in blue letters bigger than those in
Schiller's name, these words:

"Try Sozodont;" "Buy Sun Stove Polish;" "Helmbold's Buchu;"
"Try Benzaline for the Blood."

He was captured and it turned out that he was an American.
Upon his trial the judge said to him:

"You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is
privileged to profane and insult Nature, and, through her,
Nature's God, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny
in his pocket. But here the case is different. Because you
are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your sentence light;
if you were a native I would deal strenuously with you.
Hear and obey: --You will immediately remove every trace
of your offensive work from the Schiller monument; you pay
a fine of ten thousand francs; you will suffer two years'
imprisonment at hard labor; you will then be horsewhipped,
tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a
rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever.
The severest penalties are omitted in your case--not as
a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the
misfortune to give you birth."

The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across
the deck. My back hair was mingling innocently with
the back hair of a couple of ladies. Presently they
were addressed by some one an