mountain-climbing. I have learned the game. Men and women come in at
night recounting the wonderful feats they have accomplished and the
dangers they have escaped. Everybody carries an “alpenstock,” which
is a sharp-pointed cane with a chamois handle, and whenever he climbs
a peak he has a ring burned around the stick, and shows it as proudly
as the Indian once did the notches which meant deaths of enemies. I
am a little skeptical, and listen to the climbing stories as I do to
fish stories at home. It is too much like golf where you keep your own
count. Perhaps I shall yield to the demands of environment enough to
get me an alpenstock and have a few rings burned in it so I can have a
few chips in the game, as it were. The men run to knickerbockers, wear
feathers in their hats and carry packs on their shoulders. The women
wear short skirts which don’t hang well and big shoes with nails in
the soles—I am speaking now of people who do the thing right, and not
those who sit on the porch and loaf.
[Illustration]
The Swiss themselves are degenerating from the simple-hearted people
they were. They have fallen before the temptations of the tourists.
They see the American and the Englishman with lots of money to spend,
and they find it easier to separate the stranger from his cash than
they do to hunt chamois and herd cattle. It is a cause of much regret
to the intelligent Swiss that this is so, but I do not notice the
intelligent mourners going out into the mountains and setting an
example of industry. They sell the jewelry, the souvenirs, the milk
and the wine at advanced prices, and they have the greatest number
of hotels and boarding-houses of any country on earth. If you enjoy
handsome little shops with trinkets and gew-gaws, jewelry and
picture cards, carved wood and imitation stones, as I do, you would
thoroughly enjoy wandering through Geneva. The Geneva artisan will take
a chair-leg and make a musical instrument. Sit down on a sofa and you
will be startled to hear a piece of Wagner’s played by the concealed
music-box.
[Illustration]
The language spoken in Geneva is French. I do not think it is good
French, for the people here do not understand the French with the fine
Parisian accent I brought from Paris. But a large proportion of the
people understand English. I am of the opinion that in spite of the
fact that French is still the international language in Europe, the one
you can use with educated people nearly anywhere, the English-American
is the coming language. Very few people in Europe travel. The Germans
do so more than others, but the French seldom do, the Italians rarely,
and the Spanish and the Russians practically never. The English come
to the continent in great numbers, and the Americans are in droves. In
a place like Geneva in the principal shops and on the promenades you
would say that fully half the people were English-speaking. In order to
take care of these profitable guests the Swiss and others are learning
enough of the language to sell them cheap goods at high prices, and
they will learn more. It is not an uncommon experience to go into a
store and after laboriously constructing a question in alleged French
to get an answer in very fair English.
I am told that up to a few years ago the American traveler was
regarded with a little contempt by the people of continental Europe,
and considered as only so much soil from which to gather wealth. But
Americans of experience tell me that since the war with Spain all this
has changed. As for myself, these Europeans have always spoken in the
friendliest way of America, even when they did not know there were any
Yankees around. The theory that we were only a commercial people and
would not fight (the world loves a fighter) was disproven so thoroughly
that they have rather gone to the other extreme, and Americans are now
very popular as Americans and not merely for their money. Europe also
has the highest opinion of McKinley and Roosevelt. With a great deal of
pride in my heart I read a leading editorial in the London Times saying
that Roosevelt’s letter to Russia and Japan urging peace was one of the
greatest of state papers. The Times added that it was “straightforward,
frank and clear—the American idea of diplomacy.” All of Europe now
regards America as a great and friendly power, and an American swells
up considerably more over his country when he is in other nations
than he does at home, where he is apt to get fussy and cynical. The
English are not popular on the continent, though England is feared and
respected. The Americans are liked because they are believed to be fair
and square.
[Illustration]
At the other end of Lake Geneva is the castle of Chillon. It is about
as big as the court-house in Hutchinson, and looks like the old
sugar-mill, only more so. Byron did a great deal for the people in that
neck of the woods, for his poem made the castle famous, and tourists
come by the hundreds and buy. In return they have named the big hotel
the Byron, which shows they are not ungrateful. Byron’s poem had the
poor prisoner confined in a dungeon with two brothers, and he had the
torture of seeing them die. The facts are that there never was any
“prisoner of Chillon” except in the brilliant imagination of Lord
Byron. Of course many prisoners were confined in the dungeon. Every
castle in Europe has a dungeon, and none of them were constructed with
an idea of sanitary conditions or the health of the prisoners. But the
dungeon at Chillon is the lightest and airiest dungeon I have seen. It
is as comfortable as a good many hotel rooms in the United States. The
only prisoner of note that had any such experience was a preacher named
Bonnivard, who was kept there for two years because he believed or
didn’t believe in Calvin,—I have forgotten which it was. Bonnivard had
no brothers, and lived a number of years afterward and said he enjoyed
his confinement at Chillon because he had so much time to think. Our
guide showed our party the pathway the prisoner’s feet had worn in
the rock where he had walked back and forth within the limit of his
chains. I couldn’t see the path, although everybody else did. The rest
of the castle of Chillon is very interesting, as it was the residence
of a fine line of dukes who were always fighting either for or against
the king. Our guide, who spoke only French, told us all about it, but
I shall not repeat what she said. The people of Hutchinson would not
understand her remarks any better than I did.
My idea of a good joke is to have a guide who can only talk French tell
an American who can’t understand French something very important or
serious. The Frenchman tells his story with rapidity, earnestness and
gestures. The American listens with frank impatience and punctuates the
French sentences with American ejaculations which have no connection
with the subject. The Frenchman acts mad, but he isn’t at all. The
American acts pleasant, but he is really mad.
[Illustration]
The castle of Chillon is in the lake, about sixty feet from the shore.
You reach the entrance over a bridge after fighting your way through
the sellers of souvenirs. That is one thing the old dukes did not have
to contend with. If they were still doing business I think they would
fill up the dungeon with the salesmen and salesladies.
SOMETHING OF SWITZERLAND.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, July 12, 1905.
Switzerland is a succession of beautiful lakes, mountains and big
hotels, dotted here and there with manufacturing towns and vineyards.
It has been said that you cannot get too much of a good thing, but
that is a mistake. Even the man who loves pie must admit that after he
has had all the pie he can consume three times a day for a week, he
would want to change the subject. After one has been traveling through
Swiss scenery for seven days he is almost satisfied. We no longer chase
across the car to see a big mountain-peak, or hurry out of the hotel
soon after our arrival to behold the lake. And men and women with
feathers in their hats and alpenstocks in their hands do not make us
turn our heads. The sight of a little level country would look mighty
good, and a comfortable seat on the porch comes nearer to filling the
longing in my heart than the sight of a waterfall or an old castle
several minutes’ walk distant.
[Illustration]
Lucerne is the center of the tourist travel. All roads into Switzerland
lead to Lucerne, and the scenery is more varied than at any other of
the show places. The town is on the lake and the mountains are around
it. From my hotel I could see Mount Pilatus, the place where they say
Pontius Pilate finally found a resting-place. At the other end of the
view is the snow-covered Rigi, and there are all kinds of Alps in the
background. Lucerne looks like an American summer resort. It is made up
of hotels and souvenir shops, and elegantly dressed women parade up and
down the promenade walks, while rich old gentlemen sit uncomfortably
around the piazzas and wish the women-folks had let them stay at home.
It is astonishing how many men act as if they would give a good deal to
be at work somewhere rather than in Switzerland “enjoying themselves.”
A lot of people do not know how to have a good time or how to see a
strange and delightful place. I meet many people who do not care for
Europe, or Italy, or Switzerland,—the people who bring a stack of
trunks and good clothes and have to put in their time dressing up only
to be out-dressed by somebody else.
But Lucerne has one thing different. It is the “Lion of Lucerne,” the
monument erected in honor of the Swiss soldiers who died in the French
palace defending the rotten Bourbon dynasty when the revolutionists
broke in and captured the king and queen. The lion (twenty-eight feet
in length) is carved out of a sandstone ledge, and is the finest
monument or statue I ever saw. The king of beasts is dying, agony on
his face, a broken lance in his side, and his huge paw resting on a
shield of the lilies of France. The more I looked at the great work
of Thorwaldsen the more I felt it, and I went back again and again to
see it,—the real test of effect. Nearly everyone has seen copies or
pictures of this work, but it is one of the things that no copy can do
justice to, for the size and substance of the stone, the pathos and
power of the subject and the skill and the genius of the sculptor have
met most perfectly and impressively.
[Illustration]
Near Lucerne is the scene of the early struggle for Swiss liberty.
Around the lake of Lucerne are the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and
Unterwalden, whose representatives met some 500 years ago and entered
into the compact to stand together for freedom, a compact which has
never been broken. Here William Tell refused to take off his hat to the
hat the tyrant Gessler had set up and ordered all to salute. To punish
Tell the governor ordered him to take his bow and arrow and shoot an
apple from the head of his son. Tell’s aim was true, but as he turned
away another arrow dropped from his coat. When asked why he had that,
he said it was for Gessler if the boy had been hurt. Gessler took Tell
in a boat and was carrying him to a dungeon, when a storm arose and
Tell was released in order to use his skill as a boatman. He knew that
the world wasn’t big enough for both himself and Gessler, so he soon
after inserted an arrow into the tyrant’s ribs, and the Austrians had
to get a new governor.
Some cynical historians doubt this Tell story, but I do not. It is just
as good a story as a lot which appear in history and it is good enough
to be true.
After the Tell revolution, which was in the thirteenth century, those
Swiss cantons never lost their freedom, although they had to fight
for it about every generation. The Hapsburg family, which reigned in
Austria, was always trying to conquer the Swiss, and although its power
was great enough to overcome any army they could collect, it could not
cope with the mountains and gulches in which the Swiss were at home,
and where one man who knew the land was equal in fighting value to a
dozen knights in armor or on horseback. On that account the Swiss,
especially the people of these “forest cantons,” have been a free
people through all the changes in the world during more than 500 years.
Sometimes they have been selfish and narrow in their ideas of freedom,
considering that they were the only people on earth, and they have
until the last century held serfs and domineered despotically over weak
neighbors. But they were always far in advance of the rest of the world
in their ideas of personal liberty. Switzerland is the one country
which has always been a refuge to exiled patriots, rebels, conspirators
and pretenders. Switzerland will not surrender a fugitive from another
country on a political charge. The judges who sentenced Charles I. of
England to death sought refuge in Switzerland when Charles II. came
to the throne. Charles demanded that the judges be given up to him,
and brought every influence to bear, but the Swiss stood by their
law of refuge. To-day the anarchists and nihilists of Russia and the
revolutionists of every country from Roumania to Spain have their
headquarters in Geneva or some other Swiss town.
It will be noticed that I think a good deal of the Swiss, and that
I have written some criticism of the Italians. I went through Italy
without ever being overcharged, “held up,” or worked by cab-drivers,
hotel-keepers, or anyone at all. But in Switzerland, the land of
freedom and education, I have had all these things done to me. I have
been surprised and pleased by the way the people of Europe treat
strangers, even if they do want tips. I had not been meanly treated
from the time I left Boston until I reached Switzerland. The last man I
did business with in my native land was a Boston hackman, who charged
me twice what he should when he brought us to the ship. I did not meet
his equal until I got to Lucerne. I hope there is no connection between
personal liberty, republican government, and the swindling of strangers.
[Illustration]
Yesterday we went to St. Gallen, a little industrial town near
Constance. The women will recognize the name of this town if the men
do not, for it is the place Swiss embroideries come from. I found
out one thing there: Most of the Swiss hand embroidery is made by
machinery. The Swiss are called the Yankees of Europe. They are up to
almost all the tricks of the trade. They are changing from a pastoral
and agricultural people, except right in the mountains, and are making
money out of manufactories and tourists. The men and women do not wear
the ridiculous and charming peasant costumes, except in beer-gardens
and summer-resort hotels. In fact, I am impressed with the sameness
of people’s clothes everywhere. There is no longer any such thing as
characteristic costume. I saw the men’s clothes in Italy all cut and
made just as in France, England, or America. The women have the same
styles in the country districts of Switzerland that they do in Kansas
or in Paris. Of course some people know how to wear their clothes
better than others, and there is a difference in fit and make, but the
styles are the same from Hutchinson to St. Gallen.
I am learning some things in geography. Mont Blanc, the biggest
mountain in Switzerland, is in France. Constance, one of the best Swiss
resorts, is in Germany. Switzerland is such a busy little country that
it bulges out all around.
SWISS AND SWITZERLAND.
NEUHAUSEN, SWITZERLAND, July 13, 1905.
Soon after I arrived in Switzerland I inquired at a Geneva hotel
the name of the President of the Republic of Switzerland. The hall
porter (about the same as chief clerk) could not tell me, nor could
he find out on inquiry around the office. Several times in Geneva I
asked the same question, but always in vain. One or two men thought
they knew, but they were not sure, and, as I learned afterward, they
guessed wrong. I kept at the work of finding out who was the chief
executive until I reached Lucerne. In a bookstore there my question
aroused the interest of the proprietor, who spoke good English, and he
inquired around until he found out that the President of Switzerland is
named Brenner. During the process I suppose I asked a dozen educated
Swiss, and three-fourths of them could give me promptly the name of
the President of the United States, but not the name of their own
President. Of course there is a reason for what would be fearful
ignorance in any other country. The President of Switzerland doesn’t
amount to as much as the Vice-President of the United States, and it
would stagger a good many Americans to tell who was Vice-President
before Roosevelt. Switzerland is a rather loosely bound together
confederation of cantons (states). The cantons are jealous of the
federal government, and give it very little power. Up to a few years
ago there would be tariffs in some cantons against importations from
others. The general government has the power to do the international
business, but Switzerland keeps out of European politics. It would
have little or no power as an offensive nation with its three million
of people, and so it contents itself with furnishing scenery, wine,
watches, music-boxes and good air to the inhabitants of other countries
who are able to buy. The federal government consists of a congress
composed of representatives from the cantons made up like our Senate
and House. This congress elects an executive committee of seven, and
the President of Switzerland is merely the chairman of that executive
committee. Berne is the capital of Switzerland and the congress
meets there, but it can only propose important legislation, which
is then submitted to the people, who usually defeat it. The cantons
of Switzerland have various kinds of republican government. Some
have legislatures, some councils, and in a few of the small ones,
where it is practicable, the government acts by mass meetings of the
people, with an executive or a committee to carry out the legislation.
The small area of the country and of the twenty-two cantons (they
average about the size of Reno county, but some are not bigger than a
commissioner district) makes the government a peculiar proposition.
There is no foreign immigration, no uneducated class, and no one
whose ancestors have not been self-governing for a generation. And
yet as they have remodeled their local and federal constitutions and
charters, they have come closer to the American methods all the time,
the only important difference being the initiative and referendum,
which is after all only a continuance of their ancient “land gemeinde,”
or mass meetings of the people at which measures were considered and
officers elected, the voting now being done by ballot instead of
holding up the hands.
[Illustration]
As I have written before, in some cantons the people use one language
and in some another. Likewise in some everybody is a Protestant and in
others everybody is a Catholic; very seldom both faiths in one canton.
During the Reformation and for a number of years afterward the Swiss
fought and killed each other for the love of God as fiercely as in any
other country. Switzerland and southern Germany, which borders on it,
were the fields in which the great Reformers did their best and worst
work. The Reformation in Switzerland was double-headed. One branch,
led by Calvin, was marked by what we call Puritan austerity, and had
its headquarters at Geneva. From there went John Knox to Scotland and
a host of eminent preachers to England and other countries, forming
what is now called the Presbyterian Church. Zwingli, at Zurich, was
a milder, gentler teacher, and his kind of Protestantism grew most
in Switzerland. Luther, only a little way off, had still another
kind of Protestantism, and each of the three differed considerably
in confession of faith, Calvin standing on the principle of
predestination, Luther holding to transubstantiation, or the doctrine
of the actual presence of the body of our Saviour in communion, Zwingli
insisting that communion was only symbolic. Mutual friends brought
Zwingli and Luther together, and when they could not agree, Zwingli
held out his hand in parting and Luther would not even shake hands.
Zwingli was killed in a battle in a religious war with the Catholics,
but his creed really became the dominant one in Swiss Protestantism.
Calvin had Servetus burned to death because he denied the trinity.
So you see in the good old days in Switzerland there was a hard time
for the plain and honest person trying to do what was right. Those
times are past now, and Protestant and Catholic cantons get along
peaceably; but there is still friction. Each canton in Switzerland
looks after its educational matters and there are good schools
everywhere. In nearly every city is a big university. I suppose that
in proportion to population there are more university graduates in
Switzerland than in any other country on earth. In America the young
men and women too often cut short their education in order to get into
business. In Switzerland, there are no such alluring opportunities,
and the students stay till graduation. A young Swiss will go through
the university and then go to work at the trade of his father. In
America the young man would want to “do better” and really does worse
by becoming a lawyer or an editor. Even good things have their bad
features, and American colleges make mighty poor professional men out
of material which was intended for good mechanics and farmers.
We spent a couple of days in Zurich, the largest city of Switzerland.
Its special industry is silk-making, and the silk and embroidery stores
are beautiful. The main business street of Zurich has two rows of trees
like First avenue in Hutchinson, and the result is a delightful change
from the usual hot, bare main street of a city. And that reminds me
that it is a law in Switzerland or in the forest cantons that no one
can cut down a tree except by official permission, and then another
must be planted to take its place.
In the agricultural and pastoral parts of Switzerland a great deal of
land is held “in common,” that is government land, under the control of
the canton, not for sale at any price, but for the use of the people of
the community under strict regulations. So a Swiss peasant will have a
few acres of land of his own, a few cattle, and a right as a citizen to
pasture on the common ground and a share of the profits of the forest.
Immigration is not invited, although tourists with money are welcomed,
for the more people the less the share of each in the common fund.
There can hardly be any poverty in Switzerland, except, of course, in
the cities. Every Swiss peasant can make a living if he will work.
But neither can he be expected to get rich nor be a bigger man than
his father. He must follow the beaten path marked out by centuries of
custom and more firmly established than the unwritten constitution of
the country.
[Illustration]
I am getting more and more impressed with the fallacy of “cheapness”
in Europe. Comparing prices with those of Hutchinson, I find that the
things which are cheaper here are silks, kid gloves, diamonds, and
the products of labor like embroidery, lace, clocks, wood carvings,
tailor-made clothes and straw hats (poorly made). Cotton goods, linen
goods, shoes, iron and steel, bread and meat, coffee, and most of what
we call necessities of life, are higher in Europe than in America.
It is the people who are cheap and not the things; and when I say
“cheap” I do not mean lacking in energy, ability, or industry, but in
opportunity to make more than a living, to have leisure or the common
luxuries and often necessities.
[Illustration]
This is the last night in Switzerland. To-morrow we cross the line
to Constance, which is in Germany, and which is spelled Konstanz and
abbreviated “Kaz.,” which makes it near to “Kas.” Neuhausen is the
place where the Rhine makes its big leap down the rocks, a fall of
sixty feet, and on account of the volume of water the grandest in
Europe. It is the Niagara Falls of the Alpine country, but it is not
in the same class with Niagara Falls, U. S. A. The Rhine is about as
wide as the Kaw at Topeka, but much deeper, and the falls are about
four times the height of Bowersock’s dam at Lawrence. A beautiful hotel
faces the roaring torrent as it precipitates itself over the rocks amid
clouds of spray. The prices at the hotel are higher than the falls. I
can only call to mind one place where you feel that you are being more
genteelly robbed with your own consent, and that is at Niagara Falls,
New York. But our Niagara Falls are higher to correspond.
GERMANY.
IN THE BLACK FOREST.
TRIBERG, GERMANY, July 17, 1905.