ity to
write letters, or yawned over the books scattered about the _salon_.
Among them was a well-thumbed copy of "Artemus Ward, His Book." At the
foot of each page the local allusions of the jokes were explained, I
remember. Out in the street, umbrellas were dodging about from one shop
to another. These rainy days, though a loss to the guides, are harvest
times for the shopkeepers. Photographs and stereoscopic views of the
mountains, the glaciers, and daring climbers hanging on by their
eyelids, abound here, with any amount of wood and chamois (?) horn
carving and crystal ornaments. Speaking of chamois-horn, if you expect
to see in Switzerland--as you do in geographies--chamois perched upon
every crag, preparatory to bounding from peak to peak, you will be
grievously disappointed. Not a chamois will greet your eyes. We
passed--I have forgotten where--a pen in which, by paying a certain sum,
we might look upon a veritable live chamois; but we had no desire to see
the incarnation of liberty thus degraded.

We waited two days for the uplifting of the clouds, making, in the mean
time, an excursion up the Montanvert to overlook the Mer de Glace--which
is not a sea, but a river of ice, like all the glaciers that have worked
themselves down into these valleys. We retired one night with the cloud
curtains spread low over our heads; the next morning a voice from
outside of our door called, "Look out of your window." We sprang up,
seized the cord of the shutters, and behold! a new heaven and new earth!
Every vestige of cloud was gone. The mountains were bathed in sunlight,
vivid green were the peaks before us, which had never met our gaze until
now, while behind the nearest, against the deep blue of the summer sky,
rose the three vast white steps which lead heavenward, the highest of
which men call Mont Blanc. All that morning, as we descended from the
valley of Chamouni to Sallenches, we turned continually to look back;
and still, white and beautiful, but growing less in the distance, rose
the triple domes.

We had taken a carriage to Sallenches: here we find places in the open
diligence for Geneva. We pause in the first village through which we
pass, where a knot of people gathers about a round little old woman. She
wears a wide-rimmed hat over her neat frilled cap, and carries another
upon her arm. Her waist is dimly defined by the strings of a voluminous
apron, and her mind entirely distracted by the cares attendant upon th