“I always have a good time with ’em, no matter which I stay with. Sometimes I go to Filkins’ and sometimes to Beaver’s. Filkins’ wife is a rather high-falutin sort of a woman, and when Filkins got rich she made him go and buy a lot on Eagle street—no cheap lot, bet yer—one hundred feet front, and the Lord knows how deep, and she made him build the best house on it there is in Buffalo. She has conservatories, and a carriage, and velvet carpets, pianos, and bath rooms, and silver, and everything bang up, and when they dine the old man has to sit down in a dress coat, with a nigger behind him. Oh, it’s nifty, y’ bet yer.
END OF FILKINS & BEAVER.
“But old Beaver he’d never do anything of the kind. He stuck to the little frame cottage he built for himself down on Swan street, and he sets down to his dinner in his shirt sleeves, and eats off’n stone ware, and has no wines like Filkins, and swears he wouldn’t trade his toby of ale for all the wines that ever were imported. And his wife only keeps one hired gal, and does the heft of the work about the house herself. You kin see her any time with her sleeves rolled up and her apern on, bustlin’ about in jist the same old way, and they have their friends on Sunday to take pot-luck with ’em, and I ain’t sure after all but that Beaver is right. He swears he will never build a new house till he has thirty grand-children, and then only one jist large enough to accommodate and hold ’em all at one table Christmas day. He laughs at Filkins with his fine airs, though they are the best friends in the world. You couldn’t get a word of difference between ’em for any one of their mills, or for all of ’em together.
“I remember in 1865 I was in Buffalo, and one of their propellers—it was the Jeannette, I believe—no, it was the Ariel, had just—”
One by one the party had slipped out of the smoking-room at the beginning of the new chapter of the experience of Filkins & Beaver, the termination of which no man could foretell. I took advantage of his raising his glass to his lips to get away myself. I presume he finished the story to the waiter, for the next day when I casually remarked that Jones was coming he looked frightened, and quietly slipped out of the room.
But no one of the party ever learned why wheat could not be advantageously floured east of Minneapolis.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
IN SWITZERLAND.
THE scenery from Chamonix to Geneva, by the way of Sallanches, St. Martin, Cluses and Bonneville is magnificent. Leaving Chamonix the road winds down the beautiful valley with the Glacier des Bossons, overshadowed by Mont Blanc, on the right, while on the left are the pretty hamlets and fruitful farms that relieve the barren, rugged mountains on either side.
The road, which is a marvel of smoothness, as are all the roads in Switzerland, crosses and recrosses the river Arve, until, after passing through a long tunnel, hewn through a massive rock, it strikes another valley and makes a wide sweep around the horseshoe-shaped mountain, giving a splendid view up and down the valley. Far across this valley is a long high range of mountains down which at different places great cataracts of water come tumbling, dashing the spray high in air.
Here we pass through the pretty village of St. Gervais, with its celebrated baths. Then a long straight drive for an hour or more, and with an extra crack of the whip the carriage whirls into Sallanches, where the horses are changed, while the weary, hot and dusty travelers rest and refresh themselves.