“Early one morning,
Just as the day was dawning.”
my slumbering conscience rose in Puritan strength and asserted its rights
to a hearing.
“Salemina,” said I, as I walked into her room, “this life that we are
leading will not do for me any longer. I have been too much immersed in
ruins. Last night in writing to a friend in New York I uttered the most
disloyal and incendiary statements. I said that I would rather die than
live without ruins of some kind; that America was so new, and crude, and
spick and span, that it was obnoxious to any æsthetic soul; that our
tendency to erect hideous public buildings and then keep them in repair
afterwards would make us the butt of ridicule among future generations.
I even proposed the founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,—in
which the stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land
and erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins
wouldn’t have any associations at first, but what of that? We have
plenty of poets and romancers; we could manufacture suitable associations
and fit them to the premises. At first, it is true, they might not fire
the imagination; but after a few hundred years, in being crooned by
mother to infant and handed down by father to son, they would mellow with
age, as all legends do, and they would end by being hallowed by rising
generations. I do not say they would be absolutely satisfactory from
every standpoint, but I do say that they would be better than nothing.
“However,” I continued, “all this was last night, and I have had a change
of heart this morning. Just on the borderland between sleeping and
waking, I had a vision. I remembered that to-day would be Monday the 1st
of September; that all over our beloved land schools would be opening and
that your sister pedagogues would be doing your work for you in your
absence. Also I remembered that I am the dishonourable but Honorary
President of a Froebel Society of four hundred members, that it meets
to-morrow, and that I can’t afford to send them a cable.”
“It is all true,” said Salemina. “It might have been said more briefly,
but it is quite true.”
“Now, my dear, I am only a painter with an occasional excursion into
educational fields, but you ought to be gathering stories of knowledge to
lay at the feet of the masculine members of your School Board.”
“I ought, indeed!” sighed Salemina.
“Then let us begin!” I urged. “I want to be good to-day and you must be
good with me. I never can be good alone and neither can you, and you
know it. We will give up the lovely drive in the diligence; the luncheon
at the French restaurant and those heavenly little Swiss cakes” (here
Salemina was almost unmanned); “the concert on the great organ and all
the other frivolous things we had intended; and we will make an
educational pilgrimage to Yverdon. You may not remember, my dear,”—this
was said severely because I saw that she meditated rebellion and was
going to refuse any programme which didn’t include the Swiss cakes,—“you
may not remember that Jean Henri Pestalozzi lived and taught in Yverdon.
Your soul is so steeped in illusions; so submerged in the Lethean waters
of the past; so emasculated by thrilling legends, paltry titles, and
ruined castles, that you forget that Pestalozzi was the father of popular
education and the sometime teacher of Froebel, our patron saint. When
you return to your adored Boston, your faithful constituents in that and
other suburbs of Salem, Massachusetts, will not ask you if you have seen
the Castle of Chillon and the terrace of Corinne, but whether you went to
Yverdon.”
Salemina gave one last fond look at the lake and picked up her Baedeker.
She searched languidly in the Y’s and presently read in a monotonous,
guide-book voice. “Um—um—um—yes, here it is, ‘Yverdon is sixty-one miles
from Geneva, three hours forty minutes, on the way to Neuchâtel and
Bâle.’ (Neuchâtel is the cheese place; I’d rather go there and we could
take a bag of those Swiss cakes.) ‘It is on the southern bank of Lake
Neuchâtel at the influx of the Orbe or Thiele. It occupies the site of
the Roman town of Ebrodunum. The castle dates from the twelfth century
and was occupied by Pestalozzi as a college.’”
This was at eight, and at nine, leaving Francesca in bed, we were in the
station at Geneva. Finding that we had time to spare, we went across the
street and bargained for an _in-transit_ luncheon with one of those dull
native shopkeepers who has no idea of American-French.
Your American-French, by the way, succeeds well enough so long as you
practise, in the seclusion of your apartment, certain assorted sentences
which the phrase-book tells you are likely to be needed. But so far as
my experience goes, it is always the unexpected that happens, and one is
eternally falling into difficulties never encountered by any previous
traveller.
For instance, after purchasing a cold chicken, some French bread, and a
bit of cheese, we added two bottles of lemonade. We managed to ask for a
glass, from which to drink it, but the man named two francs as the price.
This was more than Salemina could bear. Her spirit was never dismayed at
any extravagance, but it reared its crested head in the presence of
extortion. She waxed wroth. The man stood his ground. After much
crimination and recrimination I threw myself into the breach.
“Salemina,” said I, “I wish to remark, first: That we have three minutes
to catch the train. Second: That, occupying the position we do in
America,—you the member of a School Board and I the Honorary President of
a Froebel Society,—we cannot be seen drinking lemonade from a bottle, in
a public railway carriage; it would be too convivial. Third: You do not
understand this gentleman. You have studied the language longer than I,
but I have studied it more lately than you, and I am fresher, much
fresher than you.” (Here Salemina bridled obviously.) “The man is not
saying that two francs is the price of the glass. He says that we can
pay him two francs now, and if we will return the glass to-night when we
come home he will give us back one franc fifty centimes. That is fifty
centimes for the rent of the glass, as I understand it.”
Salemina’s right hand, with the glass in it, dropped nervelessly at her
side. “If he uttered one single syllable of all that rigmarole, then
Ollendorf is a myth, that’s all I have to say.”
“The gift of tongues is not vouchsafed to all,” I responded with dignity.
“I happen to possess a talent for languages, and I apprehend when I do
not comprehend.”
Salemina was crushed by the weight of my self-respect, and we took the
tumbler, and the train.
It was a cloudless day and a beautiful journey, along the side of the
sapphire lake for miles, and always in full view of the glorious
mountains. We arrived at Yverdon about noon, and had eaten our luncheon
on the train, so that we should have a long, unbroken afternoon. We left
our books and heavy wraps in the station with the porter, with whom we
had another slight misunderstanding as to general intentions and terms;
then we started, Salemina carrying the lemonade glass in her hand, with
her guide-book, her red parasol, and her Astrakhan cape. The tumbler was
a good deal of trouble, but her heart was set on returning it safely to
the Geneva pirate; not so much to reclaim the one franc fifty centimes as
to decide conclusively whether he had ever proposed such restitution. I
knew her mental processes, so I refused to carry any of her properties;
besides, the pirate had used a good many irregular verbs in his
conversation, and upon due reflection I was a trifle nervous about the
true nature of the bargain.
The Yverdon station fronted on a great open common dotted with a few
trees. There were a good many mothers and children sitting on the
benches, and a number of young lads playing ball. The town itself is one
of the quaintest, quietest, and sleepiest in Switzerland. From 1803 to
1810 it was a place of pilgrimage for philanthropists from all parts of
Europe; for at that time Pestalozzi was at the zenith of his fame, having
under him one hundred and sixty-five pupils from Europe and America, and
thirty-two adult teachers, who were learning his method.
But Yverdon has lost its former greatness now! Scarcely any English
travellers go there and still fewer Americans. We fancied that there was
nothing extraordinary in our appearance; nevertheless a small crowd of
children followed at our heels, and the shopkeepers stood at their open
doors and regarded us with intense interest.
“No English spoken here, that is evident,” said Salemina ruefully; “but
you have such a gift for languages you can take the command to-day and
make the blunders and bear the jeers of the public. You must find out
where the new Pestalozzi Monument is,—where the Château is,—where the
schools are, and whether visitors are admitted,—whether there is a
respectable hotel where we can get dinner,—whether we can get back to
Geneva to-night, whether it’s a fast or a slow train, and what time it
gets there,—whether the methods of Pestalozzi are still
maintained,—whether they know anything about Froebel,—whether they know
what a kindergarten is, and whether they have one in the village. Some
of these questions will be quite difficult even for you.”
Well, the monument was not difficult to find, at all events. We accosted
two or three small boys and demanded boldly of one of them, “_Où est le
monument de Pestalozzi_, _s’il vous plaît_?”
He shrugged his shoulders like an American small boy and said vacantly,
“_Je ne sais pas_.”
“Of course he does know,” said Salemina; “he means to be disagreeable; or
else ‘monument’ isn’t monument.”
“Well,” I answered, “there is a monument in the distance, and there
cannot be two in this village.”
Sure enough it was the very one we sought. It stands in a little open
place quite “in the business heart of the city,”—as we should say in
America, and is an exceedingly fine and impressive bit of sculpture. The
group of three figures is in bronze and was done by M. Gruet of Paris.
The modelling is strong, the expression of Pestalozzi benign and sweet,
and the trusting upturned faces of the children equally genuine and
attractive.