AN ENGLISH ADMIRER OF THE “AMERICAN LANGUAGE.”
At the Hôtel de l’Ours (the Bear Hotel of Englishmen and Americans
who do not care to expose their French) I added another to the list
of my pleasant English acquaintances. One morning, while sauntering
in front of the hotel before breakfast, I noticed a young man with
bright-yellow hair, whiskers, and mustache, calm gray eyes, and that
perfect freshness of complexion which one rarely sees in men’s faces
outside of England. He was habited in corduroy from his jockey-cap down
to his knee-breeches, and wore stout walking-shoes of the Alpine Club
pattern. In his right hand he sported a sharp-pointed Alpenstock, which
looked stained and worn with use, but was unscarred by branding-irons.
His well-knit figure and his good face were a recommendation to all
beholders. We exchanged glances, and would probably have spoken to each
other then, if one of the long-bearded guides had not appeared and
taken off Corduroy in the direction of the lower glacier. Corduroy was
the name which, in absence of the authentic one, I conferred upon him.
I regretted his hasty departure, for he seemed just the man to draw
into an interesting conversation.
The next morning, at about the same hour, I found Corduroy standing
alone, in the same place as before. He was again dressed for an outing,
and had his Alpenstock still in hand. He was looking fixedly in the
direction of the mighty Wetterhorn, whose snowy summit was now visible
and now concealed, as the lazy clouds or mist-wreaths drifted back
and forth. He puffed at a brierwood pipe calmly, and seemed engrossed
in that occupation and the study of Wetterhorn’s top, until he saw me
looking at him. Then he pulled the pipe from his mouth, as one who
expects to speak and be spoken to, at the same time walking toward me
with a look of friendly recognition.
Being the older, I was the first to break silence, and I did so with a
commonplace remark upon the weather, which was a little uncertain, but
promising to be fine. And I could not resist the temptation to add that
it reminded me of the day I ascended the Gorner Grat, 10,000 feet above
the sea, only two weeks before. That being my only really hard climb
in the Alps, I was as proud of it as a boy of his first trousers.
Corduroy’s face expressed great interest. He asked me a number of
questions about the state of the weather at Zermatt, and whether the
hotels were crowded, and as to the condition of the road from Vispach
to St. Niklaus, a bad bit generally. I answered him very fully, only
too happy to show off my familiarity with the most wonderful mountain
district of Switzerland. And I said patronizingly, I must confess:
“Really, now, you ought to see the Matterhorn. It’s worth the trouble,
I assure you. I was the second man on the Gorner Grat this year, and as
the snow was then about eight feet deep, and only a foot-path broken
through it part of the way, the climbing was no joke. You would find it
easier next--”
“But I have already seen the Matterhorn,” said Corduroy, who had been
quietly smoking his pipe during my remarks.
“From what point?” I asked.
“From the top. I made my second ascent last year. And hope to get round
there in July for my third.”
I have seen, in my day, many undemonstrative Englishmen. But this
one beat them all. Who could have thought he would have listened so
patiently to all my brag about that ant-hill of a Gorner Grat when he
had done the awful Matterhorn twice? I was astonished, and at first
doubtful of Corduroy’s entire veracity, though truth seemed to ooze out
of every feature of his prepossessing face. I inadvertently glanced at
the Alpenstock and saw no record of any performances written there.
Corduroy read my thoughts. He cast an eye on the smooth old Alpenstock
and smiled as he said: “Oh! we never do that, you know.”
Then I remembered to have heard that the people who do the least
climbing generally have the most names of conquered peaks on their
Alpenstocks; so that, in fact, the absence of the dreadful Matterhorn
from Corduroy’s staff became a sort of proof that he was not lying to
me. I blushed at my unworthy suspicion. It was now my turn to become
deeply interested. I asked him many questions about his ascents of
the most difficult mountain in all Europe. He answered briefly and
modestly, and I also learned from him by the corkscrew process (for I
never saw a man with less vanity) that he had ascended Mont Blanc, the
Jungfrau, the Weisshorn, Schreckhorn, and Finsteraarhorn once each, and
that he was now on the point of attacking the Wetterhorn, toward which
he had been gazing, but feared that the impending change of weather
might compel him to give it up.
I asked him where he had been the day before, with the long-bearded
guide.
“Oh, only up to the Eismeer there,” he said, jerking his thumb toward
a white and heavenly sea of ice, which shone at that moment, through
a rift in the clouds, forming a horizon line of 12,000 feet above the
ocean-level. It almost gave me a crick in the neck to look at it.
“Of course no guide was needed for a thing like that,” he added.
“But the old fellow wanted a job; so I took him along to carry the
lunch-basket. Aren’t you going to do the Eismeer?”
“Well,” said I, laughing, “I might perhaps get as far as the foot of
the glacier. But I guess I should have to discount the rest.”
Corduroy broke out laughing. “Excuse me,” said he, “but you Americans
are so amusing. Ha! ha! Discount! what a capital word! So expressive,
you know. It means, if I understand it, that you would go to the foot
of the glacier, and say that you had been to the top. Ha! ha! No
offense meant.”
“Not quite as bad as that,” I replied, laughing in turn. “To discount
it, in my sense of the word, is to imagine the rest of the glacier and
the Eismeer at the top, from the sample seen below. Have you never
discounted anything that way?”
“Ha! ha! No! no! we are never allowed to do that. Discounting would be
dead against our rules.”
I noticed that, for the second time, he employed the pronoun “we,”
from which I inferred that he was a member of some association of
mountain-climbers. As he seemed so much amused by the slang use of the
word “discount,” I thought I would favor him with a few more of our
latest and choicest inventions in that line, which happened to have
lodged in my memory:
“You tumble to my exact meaning now, I hope.”
“Ha! ha! Tumble to, signifying to understand, of course. That’s better
than discount, if possible. I do so admire the American language. So
rich, you know. Ha! ha!”
I never saw a man so easily tickled. In the ecstasy of his mirth he
capered about like a dancing bear, while his laughter rang out till it
woke the echoes in old Mettenberg which frowned above us. The noise
drew a number of the hotel guests to the door, and others peered
through the windows at him.
“They’ll think it’s a circus,” said I, innocently.
“A circus. Ha! ha! how forcible, and so funny--just like you Americans!
And perhaps you’ll next say I’m the performing clown.” And that idea
started Corduroy off in another fit of laughter.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“The size of it! How good! So humorous, you know. Ha! ha!”
“You seem to catch on to American slang like a native,” said I.
“Catch on. Ha! ha! Well, that’s the best yet. A sort of figure of
speech meaning to seize something as it flies, I suppose.”
“You have got it down fine.”
Corduroy laughed gently in an accommodating spirit; but I do not think
he caught the precise meaning of this last expression. He made no
comment on it, and I was glad he did not ask me to explain it, for I
could not have done so.
“By-the-way,” said Corduroy, “as you are an American, perhaps you can
tell me why an old story or joke is called a chestnut in your country.
It may be very funny--in fact, it must be, as it is American. But I
don’t tumble to it, as yet. Ha! ha!”
For the honor of my country, I would have liked to clear up the great
chestnut mystery to this delightful young Englishman. I had heard some
accounts of the origin of the word in its application to threadbare
anecdotes and moldy conundrums, but they were all unsatisfactory. “I am
sorry I can not answer your question,” said I, at length; “but I can
give you points on the chestnut-bell.”
Corduroy was all ears while I explained to him the construction of the
little instrument which had already worked so useful a reform in the
clubs of my country.
“Well, well,” he cried, “American inventions are truly wonderful. And
this chestnut-bell beats them all. Ha! ha! I’m so glad I met you this
morning! I’ll have a chestnut-bell made according to your description
of it down at Interlaken by a metal-worker I know there. It’s just what
we have long wanted. You see, some of our fellows don’t climb any new
mountains. They keep telling all about the old mountains they climbed
years ago. Now, I just want to shut ’em up. And the chestnut-bell is
the thing to do it. Ha! ha!” And Corduroy roared with delight.
“All right,” said I; “but as the chestnut-bell is the latest thing out
in my country, let me offer you a piece of advice.”
“What is it?” asked Corduroy, eagerly.
“It is this: Don’t give it away.”
“I see--I see. You mean I must keep this idea of a chestnut-bell to
myself, so as to get the start of all the other fellows. How very
expressive! Give away. Ha! ha!”
I was about to make some other valuable suggestion on the subject,
when I saw among the group which then filled the open doorway a
slight figure beckoning to me quite earnestly. When that small hand
is gesticulated in that peculiar way, I do not pretend not to see it.
Experience has taught me that it is much easier to answer the summons
in person at once than to explain later on why I did not do so. I said
“Ta! ta!” to Corduroy, and moved toward the house.
As I hurried away, he called out to me, “There is no getting ahead of
you Americans, you know.”
“It will be a cold day when we get left, and don’t you forget it!” was
my answer shouted back at him, exhausting my small stock of slang in
that supreme effort.
“Just so,” he cried. “Ha! ha! Cold day! Get left! What a world of
meaning! Be sure I won’t forget it! Ha! ha!”
I never saw Corduroy again. We had a little unambitious excursion of
our own to make that day, and did not get back to the Bear before
dinner-time. Then I inquired after the gentleman in corduroy, and
learned that he had given up the Wetterhorn on account of the thick
weather, and had started off for a walk over the Grimsel to the Rhône
glacier. He was well known at the hotel, being one of its regular
visitors. This steadiness of patronage might naturally be expected
of him, for he proved to be one of the most distinguished members
of the Alpine Club, famous for his devotion to mountain-climbing in
Switzerland, and a terror even to the hardiest guides, by reason of his
courage and perseverance against all obstacles. He had, it seems, a
passion for new routes and short cuts, which I hope will not some day
end the merry life of Corduroy. After this explanation, I understood
his occasional allusions to “we” and “us” and “our fellows” and
“our rules,” which forbade this and that. And sometimes now, at two
o’clock in the morning, while I am lying awake and thinking over many
things, I catch myself wondering if Corduroy has ever introduced the
chestnut-bell to the Alpine Club, and, if so, how the retired climbers
like it.