Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/188

Rh liking, and go away and turn your back upon her, that you may have the pleasure of seeing her again with surprised vision. You try to forget how beautiful she is, that you may enjoy the charm over. You come again and again, like any fond, foolish lover, and worship her anew.

Perhaps because the Jungfrau is surrounded (as you see her from Interlaken) by green mountains, her snows obtain that intensity of whiteness which makes her conspicuous even in the land of snow. One would think all snow must be equally white, but the Jungfrau makes all other snow look gray; and her peak, "the Silberhorn," is almost blinding in its dazzling brightness.

If one has time and strength, one should go over all the passes and make all the excursions. But, alas! who has time or strength in these degenerate days? They are both things of the past, and went out with our heroic ancestors. That blessed invention the chaise à porteurs—blessed for the lame and the lazy—will take you, sans fatigue, sans danger, sans everything, wherever a mule can go and wherever you want to go. I saw an Englishman who must have weighed three hundred pounds being comfortably transported over the high Alps in one of these chairs, and he was so generous with his pourboire that his bearers uttered blessings on him as they wiped their streaming foreheads and wished inconsistently that there were more like him. A Swiss will carry you anywhere, or do anything for you, for five francs. But the carriage routes and the piazzas of the hotels will give you views enough to last you a lifetime, if you have not time or strength for more. The most delicate invalid could make the tour of Switzerland.

At Grindelwald you see the glacier, of all things most indescribable. The sea frozen in a storm is the image