Roland Phelps Marks.
LUCERNE:
Ah, Kate! dear old friend of my childhood! How little I thought that night in June, when you stood up and told the audience, "Beyond the Alps lies Italy," that some day those same Alps would lie between us. We have not only been "beyond," but over them.
The soft pink glow of the early dawn hung over the village of Domodossola as the start was made for Switzerland.
Our caravan consisted of four diligences, two luggage vans, and a mounted guide, who knew every inch of the pass. He galloped from coach to coach, hurling his instructions to occupants and drivers.
Above the blowing of horns, the ringing of bells, and the answering shouts from the coaches, this guide's last command rang out loud and clear: "Keep close together! Follow me! Come!"
It was all as uncertain as life itself. How blindly and with what enthusiasm we enter the race, knowing nothing of what the day may bring!
The creaking diligences started away with their freight of human souls, to follow—follow to what? God only knows.
Again, as in life—up and up, on and on, higher and higher—until the summit is reached at noon-day, and as the shadows lengthened in the waning of the day, we began the descent.