She did it
with a pleased alacrity and a heightened enthusiasm.
She made it ALL discords, this time. She got an amount
of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new
light on human suffering. She was on the war-path all
the evening. All the time, crowds of people gathered on
the porches and pressed their noses against the windows
to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in.
The bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow,
when her appetite was finally gorged, and the tourists
swarmed in again.
What a change has come over Switzerland, and in fact
all Europe, during this century! Seventy or eighty years
ago Napoleon was the only man in Europe who could really
be called a traveler; he was the only man who had devoted
his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it;
he was the only man who had traveled extensively;
but now everybody goes everywhere; and Switzerland,
and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown
remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days
a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer.
But I digress.
In the morning, when we looked out of our windows,
we saw a wonderful sight. Across the valley,
and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand,
the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white into
the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands.
It reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows
which swells suddenly up beside one's ship, at sea,
sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, and the
rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam.
