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 CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE VOICE OF NATURE

§ 1

we recognise the fellow of the earthly Devil's Bridge, still intact as a footway, spanning the gorge; and old memories turn us off the road down the steep ruin of an ancient mule track towards it. It is our first reminder that Utopia too must have a history. We cross it and find the Reuss, for all that it has already lit and warmed and ventilated and cleaned several thousands of houses in the dale above, and for all that it drives those easy trams in the gallery overhead, is yet capable of as fine a cascade as ever it flung on earth. So we come to a rocky path, wild as one could wish, and descend, discoursing how good and fair an ordered world may be, but with a certain unformulated qualification in our minds about those thumbmarks we have left behind.

"Do you recall the Zermatt valley?" says my friend, "and how on earth it reeks and stinks with smoke?"

"People make that an argument for obstructing change, instead of helping it forward!"

And here perforce an episode intrudes. We are invaded by a talkative person.

He overtakes us and begins talking forthwith in a fluty, but not unamiable, tenor. He is a great talker,