It is said that many children who live in the central provinces, away
from the ocean, have a great longing to see it. I who had never been
away from the monotonous country surrounding us looked forward eagerly
to seeing the mountains.
I tried to imagine them; I had seen pictures of several, and I had even
painted them for the “Donkey's Skin.” My sister, when she visited Lake
Lucerne, sent me a description of the mountains, and wrote me long
letters about them, such as are seldom addressed to a child of my age.
And my ideas were further extended by some photographs of glaciers that
my sister brought me for my magic-lantern. I desired with all my heart
to see the mountains themselves.
One day, as if in answer to my wish, there came a letter that created
quite a stir in our house. It was from a first cousin of my father, who
had at one time regarded my father with a brotherly love, but for thirty
years, for some reason unknown to me, this cousin had not written or
given any sign of life.
At the time of my birth, all talk of him had ceased in our family, and I
was ignorant of his existence. And now he wrote and begged that the
old bond might be renewed; he was living, he said, in a little southern
village in the heart of the Swiss Mountains. He announced that he had
two sons and a daughter about the age of my brother and sister. His
letter was very affectionate, and my father responded to it in like
manner and told his cousin all about us, his three children.
The correspondence having continued, it was arranged that I should spend
my next vacation with my relatives; my sister was to take me there and
play the part of mother as she had done during our visit to the Island.
The south, the mountains, this sudden extension of my horizon, the
cousins who seemed literally to have fallen from the sky, became the
subject of my constant reveries until the month of August, the time set
for our departure.