“Is not that kind of reasoning—er—somewhat fatal to all enterprise?” said the parson.
“There is little enterprise, as such, in all this Alp climbing,” interrupted one of the learned young women before anybody could reply. “Not one in a hundred of all the men who spend summer after summer mountaineering ever thinks of benefiting his species by his experiences. No branch of science is the gainer by it, for the poor creature is lamentably ignorant of science in any branch—almost that such a thing exists, in fact. To him a mountain is—a mountain, and nothing more—”
“But—what in the world else should it be, Miss Severn?” said Philip.
”—Just so many thousand feet to go up,” continued the oracle, severely ignoring the flippant interruptor.
“Or so many thousand feet to come down—and then return home in a sack,” said the latter, wickedly.
“Just one more peak to add to the number he can already boast of having scaled. Nobody the gainer by it. Grand opportunities thrown away. The only end effected, the aggravation of one man’s already inflated conceit.”
“I don’t know about nobody being the gainer by it, Miss Severn,” said the General. “I am disposed to think this rage for mountaineering by no means a bad thing—in fact a distinctly good one, as anything that calls forth pluck, determination, and endurance is bound to be. Now, by the time a man has done two or three of these gentry there,” with a wave of the hand in the direction of the surrounding peaks, “his nerve is likely to be in pretty good order, and his training and condition not very deficient. No, I don’t agree with you at all, Miss Severn.”
“The guides are very considerably the gainers by it, too,” said Fordham—“the gainers by enough cash to tide them comfortably through the winter.”
“These are all very secondary considerations,” was the lofty rejoinder. “Nobody touches my point after all. General Wyatt thinks that the object of penetrating the wonders of these stupendous ice-worlds has been gained when a man has got himself into the hard muscular training of a mere brutal prize-fighter; while Mr Fordham thinks it quite sufficient if a few hundred francs find their way into the pockets of a few Swiss peasants. But what does science gain by it? Of course I except the researches of such men as Tyndall—but they are the rare exceptions.” And the speaker looked around as if challenging a reply. She was disappointed, however. Nobody seemed to think it worth their while to undertake one. Presently Fordham said—
“It has often been remarked that we are not a logical nation. Hardly a day passes without emphasising that fact to the ordinarily wide-awake observer.”