I BELIEVE it was Zeno who said, “We have only one mouth, but two ears; whereby Nature teaches us that we should speak little, but hear much.” So, having two eyes and only one pen, I must see much and write little. I shall not therefore pause, as I should like, to speak of a few charming days spent in walking through the “Black Forests” of Germany, nor of a visit to Heidelberg, beautiful for situation and famous for its university,

“Half hidden in a gallery of pines,
Nestling on the sunny slope.”

There is no more impressive sight in Germany than the ruins of the Heidelberg Castle. The remains of its frowning battlements, ivy-covered walls, and hanging gardens speak most eloquently of its former greatness and grandeur. I can never forget the moonlight nights that Johnson and I spent in Heidelberg, wandering up and down the banks of the Neckar, listening to the music of her waters as they flow on to join the legendary Rhine, a few hundred yards below.

Leaving Heidelberg at four o’clock in the morning, we travel all day through a comparatively uninteresting country, reaching Basle, Switzerland, in time to break bread with a friend (?) who kindly sent a committee to the depot to meet us. The committee insisted on carrying us up from the station in a carriage, but we told them that as we had no exercise during the day, we preferred to walk and carry our own satchels.

The day after arriving in Basle, we see a hundred and twenty-five German and Swiss emigrants starting for America. At the request of the emigration agent, who was possessed of much intelligence and good information, I make a speech to the emigrants the hour before their departure. I tell them not to stop around New York and Boston, but to go West. After speaking briefly of the advantages of the country, I tell them that America is not an Eden, but a wilderness; not a wilderness, either, where people are miraculously fed with manna, as were the Israelites of old, but one where the horny-handed sons of toil have to dig their bread out of the ground; yet it is a wilderness which, when watered by the sweat of the brow, is transformed into a waving harvest field. I tell them that we invite immigration, not that we want foreigners to fill easy places and control political affairs; that a few years ago there were some men in Chicago, who went there with this false idea in their brains, and, in trying to run the government, they made a mistake and ran their heads into a halter. I insist that earnest, honest, persistent, and intelligent laborers are the kind of men we want; that such men are protected by law, and rewarded with a comfortable living. After expressing the wish that they might be freed from sea-sickness while crossing the ocean, and from home-sickness after landing on the other side, I bid them adieu.

A few days suffice to show us the parks, monuments, and public buildings of the city. Among the latter, is the time-honored cathedral in which rest the bones of Erasmus, the scholar of the Reformation.

It was two hours after leaving Basle, before we could realize that we were in Switzerland. Now, however, a great mountain rose up before us. It was too long to surround, and too high to surmount; hence, we had either to stand still, retreat, go under, or else go through the mountain. After boring our way through the solid rock for two miles, we come into the light on the opposite side. We find that this tunnel is only a gateway admitting us into the land of wonders, and to the heart of the Alps, a description of which will occupy the next chapter.

We are now wild with delight, running first to one side of the car, and then to the other, to catch a momentary glimpse of the mountains as they dash by us. The snowy peaks now burst upon our vision, and, just as Johnson is getting ready to stand on his head, the brakesman shouts, “Lucerne! All out for Lucerne!” This announcement, of course, interrupts the proceedings of my traveling companion; hence, leather does not “go up,” as I expected.

We find Lucerne to be the general rendezvous of thousands of tourists who, in the search of health or pleasure, have come hither from Russia, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, and Asia Minor, from Germany, France, Italy, England and America. Sometimes, at the evening hour the different nationalities are represented in one room, and there follows a Babel of confusion.

How beautiful and varied is the scene before me at this hour! It is a lovely moonlight night, and the lake shines bright and tranquil as a polished mirror. The laughing stars lie buried in the blue depths below. On the bosom of this fairy lake are scores of lover-laden row boats, shooting, turning, gliding, in every possible direction. As the oars strike the water, they gleam in the moonlight like paddles of silver. There are two, four, or six persons in each boat. Several boats have now grouped together, and all have joined in singing “Moonlight on the Lake,” and the soft music floats over the still waters until it dies away in the distance. There is a momentary pause. And now, just in front of the long line of four-story hotels, which are set back about one hundred feet from the lake, the Hungarian Band breaks forth and its wild melodies are echoed from the surrounding hills. Next the Neapolitan Quartette causes a perfect uproar of laughter as it discourses the latest Italian comic songs with banjo accompaniment. As the clock from the cathedral tower announces the hour of eleven, a change comes over the scene. The street lamps are extinguished, and the good-humored multitude pour forth their extravagant praises of the brilliant display of fireworks which are now filling the air with noise and showers of falling stars. Thus do tourists and visitors spend their summer evenings in this little town of Lucerne, this “Swiss Lady of the Lake.”

All through the month of August, thunder-storms of unusual grandeur have been prevalent in Switzerland. Twenty-four hours ago, I witnessed a thunder-storm that made a lasting impression. It was twelve o’clock at night. The evening before all nature was in confusion. The angry clouds were like seething volcanoes, shooting up their thunderheads as if they would strike heaven in the face. Behind these cloud-battalions, which were constantly forming and reforming in ranks of war, the sun was skirmishing. Now and then his fiery darts would pierce the serrate columns, but immediately they would close up the gap and shut out the sun. As if given up in despair, he retired behind the western hills. The world was then locked in the embrace of night, and given over to the remorseless storm-god. The angry clouds began to gather from the east and west and north and south, growing denser and darker as they came. Muttering thunder could be heard in the distance. At last the crisis came. One blinding flash of lightning followed another. The lakes roared. The earth moved. The mountains reeled! Thunder answered thunder! Deep called unto deep! The peaks, like mountain monarchs, seemed to be quarreling with each other; each peak had a voice and each glen an echo! One moment all was painfully dark, and the next a mighty sheet of flame could be seen falling from the clouds upon the mountain tops. There it lingered for a moment, and then, rolling itself into billows, it came dashing down the rocky steeps like cataracts of fire, turning night into day and revealing a hundred snow-capped peaks around.