-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
Smyrna railway; but when it comes down to good solid
honest slow motion, I bet my money on the glacier.
As a means of passenger transportation, I consider
the glacier a failure; but as a vehicle of slow freight,
I think she fills the bill. In the matter of putting
the fine shades on that line of business, I judge she
could teach the Germans something.

I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land
journey to Zermatt. At this moment a most interesting
find was made; a dark object, bedded in the glacial ice,
was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved to be a piece
of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk, perhaps;
but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theo