The sharp pointed roofs of Nyon’s houses, its quaint streets, pretentious hotels and historic buildings make it a favorite resort all Summer long.
The faro bankeress was of the party, she and her husband. The husband looked listlessly into the blue water, and enjoyed the succession of beautiful views, and studied nature in all its aspects, with a party of kindred spirits, in the hot cabin below, over a game of euchre, with a rapid succession of orders for cognac and water. That’s all he saw of Lake Leman. He played moodily, as though the time taken from his magnificent game at home was so much wasted. Green cloth was more to him than emerald water, and he never desired to see an elevation greater than a roulette ball.
His wife made the acquaintance of, and fastened herself to, a party of actual tourists, and to them she discoursed volubly of the prices of silk stockings in Paris, and of dress making and millinery and kindred topics. There was one young girl who really had the eye of a hawk for the actually beautiful, who would go into raptures as some wonderfully beautiful view dawned upon us, and who felt an enthusiasm which she must share with somebody. And so she would pull the faro bankeress by the sleeve, and interrupt her flow of talk.
“And then you see these stockings are—”
“Oh, Mrs. ——, do look at that mountain with the cataract rushing down its side!”
A hasty glance at the wonderful work of nature.
“Oh, yes, my dear—it’s nice. But them stockings. Why, in New York, at any first-class store—”
And so forth, and so on.
TIBBITS AND THE JEW.
Tibbitts was gorgeously arrayed in a Parisian suit, with trowsers very wide at the bottom, and cuffs of preposterous length and width. He discussed all sorts of abstruse questions with grave German professors, neither understanding a word of what the other was saying, and so he passed for a very wise young man. More men would be so esteemed if they would always talk in language which nobody can understand. I remember of being wonderfully impressed with the profundity of a New England metaphysical talker, but alas! when his six syllabled words were translated into common English, I wondered at the stupidity of his commonplaces.