OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
EDELWEISS.
Everybody has heard of it, and those who have been in Switzerland have seen in the shop-windows, if nowhere else, or in the hat of the man who leads their horse over the Wengern Alp, the little irregular, star-shaped flower with thick petals that look as if they were cut out of white flannel. People may not be certain how its name is pronounced—may call it eedelwise, or even idlewise—but as to its habits every one is fully persuaded in his own mind; that is to say, if one person believes that it grows on rocks, another is equally sure that it blooms under the snow, while in either case there is apt to be an impression that it is found only in regions where the foot of the ordinary tourist may not venture. The writer has found it, however, in various places perfectly accessible to good walkers or where a horse could carry those not in that category. Edelweiss certainly likes to grow among rocks, on the brink of a precipice or down the face of it, and out of reach if possible; but it will also nestle in the grass at some distance from the brink, and may be found even where there is no precipice at all.
The village of Zweisimmen is a quiet summer resort in the Upper Simmenthal, in the canton of Berne. The valley is green and peaceful, with chalets dotted over all the mountain-sides: the rocks of the Spielgarten tower on the one hand, the snow of the Wildstrubel closes the view to the south, where the Rawyl Pass leads to Sion in the valley of the Rhone, and, looking northward, the mountains grow more and more blue and distant in the direction of Thun. From Zweisimmen, on four excursions, the writer and others have had the pleasure of picking edelweiss. First, at the Fromattgrat. Horses and saddles are forthcoming when required, and the four legs go as far as the scattered chalets of Fromatt, the wide mountain-pasture which is reached after a steady ascent of two hours and a half. Across from the chalets rises the grat or ridge where we have to seek our edelweiss. As we mount higher the gray masses of the Spielgarten seem very near: a fresh vivifying wind, the breath of the Alps, makes one forget how warm it was toiling up the gorge. The clouds are drawing around in white veils and sweeping down into the valley, quite concealing our destination at times, hiding even the members of the party from each other if they separate themselves a little. Our fine day takes on a decidedly doubtful aspect: nevertheless, after the first cry, "Here's some!" nobody thinks of impending discomforts. Here and there in the grass the soft white petals have opened, but where the grat sinks straight down for hundreds of feet it grows more abundantly, on the edge, and, alas! chiefly over the edge; and here a steady head and common prudence come in play. Furnished with those requisites, we can collect a bunch of edelweiss, and go on our way rejoicing even though the rain-drops begin to fall, the wind grows wilder, and presently hail comes in cutting dashes anything but agreeable to one's features. We go back along the ridge and descend to the broad-roofed chalet that lies invitingly below. It goes by the name of the Stierenberger Wirthschaft, and is known to all the cow-herds round; but we want no doubtful wine, only fresh milk and thick cream in a wooden bowl, and a brown fluid called coffee. Bread we brought with us, not caring to exercise our teeth on last month's bake. In any case, nothing more solid than bread and cheese is to be found here, tavern though it is. A fire blazes in the first room, which has no window, and might properly be styled the antechamber of the cow-house, into which there is a fine view through an open door. Sixty tails are peacefully whisking to and fro, for in the middle of the day the cattle are housed to protect them from flies. All the implements of cheese-making—the immense copper kettle, the presses, pails, etc.—are kept in the antechamber. After trying to dry ourselves at the hearth, and discovering that much hail comes down the great square chimney and very little smoke goes up, we are shown into the "best room," the furniture of which consists of a bed, a pine table and benches. In the adjoining apartment are two beds, the gayly-painted chest in which our hostess brought home her bridal outfit, and another table; while in both rooms the knives and forks are stuck in the chinks of the beams over the benches—a convenient arrangement by which one has only to stretch up an arm and take down from the ceiling whatever implement is needed. In most of these chalets a tall man might be embarrassed what to do with his head: it is only necessary to go into their houses to perceive that the Swiss mountaineers are short of stature. When the hail and rain have ceased we start downward over the hilly pastures, through pine woods and beside a rushing stream, into the valley, and so back to Zweisimmen.
Another excursion was to go up to the same inn, and thence to a little lake at the foot of the Seeberg, where edelweiss is again to be found. At Iffigen Lake it may also be had in abundance; and the fourth and last occasion on which we picked it was on the Rawyl Pass. From Zweisimmen one drives to Lenk, whence the fine glaciers of the Wildstrubel are in full view, then through the village and up a steep ascent, but a good carriage-road still, to the beautiful Iffigen Fall. The water descends almost perpendicularly over picturesque rocks from a great height, falling in long arrows that seem to hesitate and linger in mid-air, and then take a fresh swoop down: a rainbow spans it at the foot, where the mist rises. Here the carriage is left, and those who intend to ride take to the saddle. The way goes up steeply to the broad Iffigen Alp, shut in on either hand by Nature's towering gray battlements. Having reached the chalets at the farther end of the pasture, we find ourselves facing the solid rock and wondering what next. Over the brow of the lofty parapet falls a little stream, looking like a white ribbon as it foams on its dizzy way. "The path certainly cannot be there," we say; but, as it happens, it is just there. It zigzags up, cut with infinite labor in the face of the mountain, like the famous Gemmi road from Loèche-les-Bains, only that it is not so smooth and more picturesque. The Rawyl, like the Gemmi, is sometimes given the reputation of a dangerous pass, but in our party a lady rode the whole way without feeling the least uneasiness. The path goes up and up until it crosses the waterfall, where one is showered with cooling spray: soon after we are over the top of the rock and on plainer ground, but still mounting. A hut is passed where the guide says travellers can spend the night should it overtake them. There is indeed nothing to prevent their spending the night there, but also nothing to aid them in so doing: the place is uninhabited and unfurnished, the only sign that it is a shelter for human beings and not for cattle being a tiny stove in one corner, with a pile of wood. Now a small green lake lies beside the way, and then the chalet on the summit is in sight, and a cross that marks the boundary between the cantons of Berne and Valais. There the highest point of our journey is reached in two and three-quarter hours from where the carriage was left, and we walk nearly another hour on the level. Snow lies in wide fields in several places across the path: the pass is never wholly free from it, for what is rain in the valley is apt to be snow at seven thousand nine hundred feet, the height of the Rawyl. During this part of the way the scene is most wild and impressive: the dark masses of the Mittaghorn, the Rohrbachstein and Rawylhorn, and the dazzling glacier of the Wildhorn rise majestically into blue space, while from the granite summits to the very path under our feet there is nothing but rock, rock, rock! It is as if we were passing where the foot of man had never trod before, so solemn is the stillness here in the midst of the "everlasting hills." To see one solitary bird flitting fitfully from point to point only makes the loneliness seem greater, and it is absolutely touching to find in a place like this the lovely little Ranunculus alpestris and Ranunculus glacialis forcing a way between the shingly stones and opening their delicate white petals to light and air. The purple Linaria alpina keeps them company, but it is only farther on, and as we come to green again, that asters, pansies and gentians gem the grass. Where the way begins to descend to Sion there is an enchanting view into the valley of the Rhone, and for a background to the picture a superb line of glaciers and snow-peaks, among them the Matterhorn. The path to Sion can be traced for some distance down, but our party intended to go back by the way it came; and while we still lingered, wandering among the knolls and rocks, we discovered edelweiss, faded and gray, however, for in these regions the latter part of August is too late to find it in perfection.
As American ladies have the reputation of being poor pedestrians, it may be of interest to add that ladies walked on all these excursions.
G. H. P.
SPOILED CHILDREN.
It will always remain a mystery to sensible people why, when they are held to a rigid consistency, compelled to face palpable and indisputable facts, and to acknowledge that under all circumstances two and two make four, and never five, there is another class who from childhood to old age thrive on their mistakes, are never forced to pay the piper, and are granted the privilege of counting the sum of two and two as four when convenient, and five when they like, or a hundred if so it should please them.
These are the spoiled children of the world, whose fate it is to get the best of everything without regard to their deserts. Others may be warm, may shiver with cold, may be weary, may be ill, but they must not complain. The burden of lamentation comes from those who were never too warm or too cold, never weary or ill, but who tremble lest in some cruel way they should be forced to suffer, and thus provide against it beforehand. To these spoiled children the system of things in general has no other design than to give them comfort in particular. And by some subtle law of attraction the good things of the world are almost certain naturally to gravitate toward them. They sleep well; they dine well; they are petted by everybody; they have no despairs; they never suffer from other people's mishaps.
A woman who marries one of these spoiled children may be sure of an opportunity to practise all the feminine virtues. She is certain to have been very much in love with him, for he was handsome, could dance and flirt to perfection, and was the very ideal of a charming lover. The little dash of selfishness in his ante-nuptial imperiousness and tender tyranny pleased her, for it seemed to be the expression of a more ardent love than that of every-day men. It depends very much upon her generosity and largeness of heart whether she soon wakes up to the fact that she has married a being destitute of sympathy, wholly careless and ignorant of others' needs and requirements, full of caprices, allowing every impulse to carry him away, and thoroughly bent on having his own will and bending everybody about him to his own purposes. Self-renunciation and absolute devotion and self-sacrifice are natural to women of a certain quality of intellect and heart, and possess the most powerful charm to their imagination, provided they can have a dash of romance or a kindling of sentiment. Hence this form of martyrdom offers the female sex the pose in which it has sat for its portrait all the centuries since civilization began, and the picture stands out impressively against a background we all can recognize. As a school for heroism nothing can equal marriage with a spoiled child.
But, although probably quite as many instances may be found in one sex as in the other, the characteristics of a spoiled child are distinctly feminine, and in no measure belong to robust masculinity. Thus, for a study, let us take a girl who from her cradle has found everything subordinate to her princess-like whims, inclinations and caprices, and has had her way by smiles and cajoleries or sobs and tears, as the case may be. She finds out at an early age that it is pleasanter and more profitable to be petted and pampered than to be forced to shift for herself. She learns that an easy little pitiful curve of her coral lips and upward glance of her baby orbs is answered by certain manifestations of tenderness and concern: thus she "makes eyes," flirts, as it were, before she can talk, and studies the art of successful tyranny. The nursery—in fact, the entire house—rejoices when she rejoices and trembles when she weeps. She wants everything she sees, and sulks at any superiority of circumstances in another; but then she sulks bewitchingly. Wherever she goes she carries an imperious sway, and keeps her foot well on the necks of her admirers.
The spoiled child blossoms into perfection as a young lady. That is her destiny, and to the proper fulfilment of it her family and friends stand ready to devote themselves. It may be they are a trifle weary of her incalculable temper, that her fascinations have palled a little upon them, and that her mysterious inability to put up with the lot of every-day mortals and bear disagreeables contentedly has worn out their patience. They want her to marry, and, without wasting any empty wishing upon a result so certain to come, she wants to marry herself. She is not likely to have unattainable ideals: what she demands is a continuation of her petted existence—a lifelong adorer to minister to her vanity and desires, to find her always beautiful, always precious, and to smooth away the rough places of life for her.
Nothing can be more bewitching than she is on her entrance into society. Nothing could seem more desirable to an admirer than the possession of the beautiful creature, who, with her alternations of sweetness and imperiousness, tenderness, and cruelty, stimulates his ardor and appears more like a spirit of fire and dew than a real woman. It seems to him the most delightful thing in the world when she confesses that she never likes what she has, but always craves what she has not—that she hates everything useful and prosaic and likes everything which people declare she ought to renounce. She is unreasonable, and he loves her unreason—it bewitches him: she is obstinate, and he loves to feel the strength of her tiny will, as if it were the manifestation of some phenomenal force in her nature. Her scorn for common things, her fastidiousness, her indifference to the little obligations which compel less dainty and spirited creatures,—all act as chains and rivet his attachment to her.
A few months later, when she has become his wife, and he is forced to look at her tempers and her caprices, at her fastidiousness and expensiveness, from an altered standpoint, her whole character seems to be illuminated with new light. He no longer finds her charming when she has an incurable restlessness and melancholy: her pretty negations of the facts life present to her begin to seem to him the product of a mind undisciplined by any actual knowledge that she is "a human creature, subject to the same laws as other human creatures." He has hitherto considered that her scorn for the common and usual indicated an appreciation of the rarest and loftiest, but she seems to have no appreciation for anything save enjoyment. She has no idea of the true purposes of life: she likes everything dwarfed to suit her own stature. It is not by compliance that her husband can give her more than temporary pleasure. If she wants to see Europe, Europe will not satisfy her. "Sense will support itself handsomely in most countries," says Carlyle, "on eighteen pence a day, but for fantasy planets and solar systems will not suffice."
L. W.
PRAYER-MEETING ELOQUENCE.
Weekly prayer-meetings in New England villages offer a variety of singular experiences to the unaccustomed listener, and it seems almost incredible at times that they can furnish spiritual sustenance even to the devout. There are apt to be two or three among the regular attendants who being, according to their own estimate, "gifted in prayer," raise their voices loud and long with many a mellifluous phrase and lofty-sounding polysyllable. Mr. Eli Lewis is one of the most eloquent among the church-members in the village of C——, and if left to his own way would engross the entire evening with his prayers and exhortations. Nothing is too large for his imagination to grasp nor too small for his observations to consider. "O Lord, Thou knowest!" he repeats endlessly, sometimes qualifying this statement by putting into the next phrase, "O Lord, Thou art probably aware!" He is fond of poetry too, and frequently interpolates into his petition and thanksgiving his favorite verses. His fellow-worshippers are fully conscious of his excellent intentions, but there is some jealousy of the surpassing length of his prayers. The other evening he was standing, as his custom is, with his long arms upraised with many a strange gesture. He had been on his feet half an hour already, and there began to be signs of restlessness among the bowed heads around him. Still, there was no sign of any let up. He was engaged in drawing a vivid picture of the condition of the universe in the abstract, the world in general and his country and native village in particular, and required ample time fully to elucidate his views regarding their needs, but proposed to illustrate it by quotations. "O Lord," said he, "Thou knowest what the poet Cowper says—" He paused and cleared his throat as if the better to articulate the inspired strains of poetry, and began again more emphatically: "O Lord, Thou art probably aware what the poet Cowper says—" but the second time broke off. He could not remember what it was the poet Cowper said, but with a view to taking the place his memory halted at, went back to the starting-place and recommenced: "O Lord, Thou recollectest what the poet Cowper says—" It was of no use: he could not think of it, and with a wild gesture put his hand to his head. "O Lord," he exclaimed in a tone of excessive pain, "I cannot remember what the poet Cowper says," and prepared to go on with other matter; but Deacon Smith had been watching his opportunity for twenty minutes, and was already on his feet. "Let us pray," he said in a deep voice, which broke on Brother Lewis's ears with preternatural power, and he was obliged to sit down while the senior deacon held forth. No sooner, however, had Deacon Smith's amen sounded than Mr. Eli Lewis started up. "O Lord," he cried in a tone of heartfelt satisfaction, "I remember now what the poet Cowper says;" and, repeating it at length, he finished his remarks.
It was Deacon Smith who one Sunday asked his pastor to put a petition for rain into his afternoon prayer, as moisture was very much needed by the deacon's parched fields and meadows. Accordingly, Dr. Peters, who was something of a rhetorician, alluded in his prayer to the melancholy prospects of the harvest unless rain should soon be sent, and requested that the Almighty would consider their sufferings and dispense the floods which He held in His right hand. After service, as the reverend doctor left the church, he saw Mr. Smith standing rigid in the porch, perhaps looking for a rising cloud, and remarked to him, "Well, deacon, I hope our petition may be answered." He received only a snort of wrath and defiance in reply. Rather puzzled as to what had vexed his parishioner, Dr. Peters said blandly, "You heard my prayer for a shower, Deacon Smith?" The deacon turned grimly: "I heard you mention the matter of rain, Dr. Peters, but, good Heavens, sir! you should have insisted upon it!"
A. T.
THE JARDIN D'ACCLIMATATION OF PARIS.
This beautiful garden, one of the most attractive places in the world, was established in the Bois de Boulogne in 1860. It was in the most flourishing condition at the time of the breaking out of the war with Germany. That war nearly ruined it. During the siege elephants and other valuable animals were sacrificed for food. The carrier-pigeons that did such noble service during the siege were mostly raised in this establishment, and those that survived the war are kept there and most tenderly preserved. "Many died gloriously on the field of honor," as we read in the records of the society, which preserve a full account of their wonderful feats. Some of them again and again dared the Prussian lines, carrying those precious microscopic despatches photographed upon pellicles of collodion—so light that the whole one hundred and fifteen thousand received during the siege do not weigh over one gramme, a little over fifteen grains!
The great greenhouse of these gardens for plants that cannot endure a temperature lower than two degrees below zero centigrade (28.4° Fahr.) would enchant even the most indifferent observer. The building itself is one of the finest structures of its kind. It was once the property of the Lemichez Brothers, celebrated florists at Villiers, at which place it was known as the Palais des Flors. The Acclimatation Society purchased it in 1861, and every winter since then there has been a magnificent and unfailing display of flowers there. Masses of camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas, primroses, bruyères, pelargoniums constantly succeed each other. These are merely to delight the visitors, the great object of the hothouse being to nurse foreign plants and experiment with them. Among the rare ones are the paper-plant of the Aralia family; the Chamærops, or hemp-plant; the Phormium tenax, or New Zealand flax; and the Eucalyptus of Australia, that wonderful tree introduced lately into Algeria, where it grows six mètres a year, and yields more revenue than the cereals. This, at least, is what the official handbook of the garden says. It may be that the famous "fever-plant" has lost some of the faith accorded to it at first.
At the end of this great greenhouse there is a beautiful grotto where a little brook loses itself playing hide-and-seek among the fronds of the maiden-hair and other lovely ferns. At the right of this grotto is a reading-room where visitors may find all the current periodicals—on the left, the library of the society, rich in works upon agriculture, zootechnie, natural history, travels, industrial and domestic economy, etc., in several languages. The remarkable thing about this great greenhouse is the ever-flourishing, ever-perfect condition of its vegetation. Of course this effect must be secured by succursal hothouses, not always open to visitors. No tree, no plant, ever appears there in a sickly condition, but this may be said also of the animals in the gardens. I shall not soon forget a great wire canary cage some sixteen or more feet square, enclosing considerable shrubbery and scores of birds. There I received my first notion of the natural brilliancy of the plumage of these birds: its golden sheen literally dazzled the eyes.
The garden does excellent work for the French people besides furnishing a popular school and an inimitable pleasure resort: it assures the preservation of approved varieties of fruits, grains, animals. Whoever questions the absolute purity of his stock, from a garden herb up to an Arabian steed, can place this beyond question by substituting those furnished by the Society of Acclimatation. Eggs of birds packed in its garden have safely crossed the Atlantic, seventy-five per cent. hatching on their arrival. So immensely has the business of the society increased that more ground has had to be secured for nursery and seed-raising purposes, and the whole vast Zoological Gardens of Marseilles have been secured and turned into a "tender," as it were, to the Jardin d'Acclimatation at Paris. This was a very important acquisition. Marseilles, the great Mediterranean sea-port of France, is necessarily the spot where treasures from Africa, Asia and the South Sea Islands have to be landed, and they arrive often in a critical condition and need rest and careful nursing before continuing their journey.
One of the functions of the garden is to restock parks with game when the pheasants, hares, wild-boars, deer, etc. become too rare for good sport: another is to tame and break to the harness certain animals counted unmanageable. The zebra is one of these. The society has succeeded perfectly in breaking the zebra and making him work in the field quite like the horse. An ostrich also allows itself to be harnessed to a small carriage and to draw two children in it over the garden. Still another work of the society is to breed new species. A very beautiful animal has been bred by crossing the wild-ass of Mongolia with the French variety.
Among the rare animals of the garden may be mentioned the apteryx, the only bird existing belonging to the same family as the Dinornis giganteus and the still larger Epyornis maximus of Madagascar—monstrous wingless birds now extinct. One of the eggs of the latter in a fossil condition is preserved in the museum of the Garden of Plants in Paris. Its longer axis is sixteen inches, I think. It is, for an egg, a most wonderful thing, and on account of its size the bird laying it has been supposed to be of very much greater size than even the Dinornis giganteus, a perfect skeleton of which exists; but this seems to be a too hasty conclusion, for the apteryx, a member of the same family, has laid an egg or two in captivity, and one of these on being weighed proved to be very nearly one-fourth the whole weight of the bird, the bird weighing sixty ounces and the egg fourteen and a half.
The Tallegalla Lathami, or brush-turkey of Australia, is another rare bird. It does not sit upon its eggs, but constructs a sort of hot-bed for them, which it watches during the whole term as assiduously as a wise florist does his seeds planted under glass or as a baker does his ovens. As in the ostrich family, it is the male that has the entire care of the family from the moment the eggs are laid—a fairer division of labor than we see in most ménages. The interesting process of constructing the hot-bed has been observed several times in Europe. It is as follows: When the time arrives for the making of the nest the enclosure is supplied with sticks, leaves and detritus of various kinds. The male then, with his tail to the centre of the enclosure, commences with his powerful feet to throw up a mound of the materials furnished. To do this he walks around in a series of concentric circles. When the mound is about four feet high the female adds a few artistic touches by way of smoothing down, evening the surface and making a depression in the centre, where the eggs in due time are laid in a circle, each with the point downward and no two in contact. The male tends this hot-bed most unweariedly. "A cylindrical opening is always maintained in the centre of the circle"—no doubt for ventilation—and the male will often cover and uncover the eggs two or three times a day, according to the change of temperature. The observer, noting how intelligently this bird watches the temperature, almost expects to see him thrust a thermometer into his mound! On the second day after it is hatched the young bird leaves the nest, but returns to it in the afternoon, and is very cozily tucked up by his devoted papa.
One thing in the garden that used to greatly attract visitors was the Gaveuse Martin, a machine for cramming fowls in order to fatten them rapidly. The society considered Martin's invention of so much importance to the world that it granted him a building in the garden and permission to charge a special admission. The machine has since been introduced into the artificial egg-hatching establishment of Mr. Baker at Catskill-on-the-Hudson; at least, he has a machine for "forced feeding" which must greatly resemble Martin's. Specimens fattened by the Gaveuse Martin, all ready for the broche, used to be sold on the premises. The interior of the building was occupied by six gigantic épinettes, each holding two hundred birds. A windlass mounted upon a railroad enabled the operator (gaveur, from gaver, to cram, an inelegant term) very easily to raise himself to any story of the épinette. The latter was a cylinder turning upon its axis, and thus passing every bird in review. "An india-rubber tube introduced into the throat, accompanied by the pressure of the foot upon a pedal, makes the bird absorb its copious and succulent repast in the wink of an eye." Four hundred an hour have been thus fed by one operator. Fowls thus fattened are said to possess a delicacy of flavor entirely their own.
M. H.