THE END OF PONTIUS PILATE.
Did all this happen? Possibly. I was not there, and therefore cannot say positively that it did not. I wish to be truthful and reasonable. But I will venture my opinion that Pilate never came to Switzerland; that after his term expired as Governor of Judea he stole all he could lay his hands upon and went back to Rome, and went over to the new Emperor or Consul, or whatever they called the official who had the giving out of patronage, and got a new appointment somewhere else. That is what became of Pontius Pilate.
However, Mt. Pilatus is well worth seeing, and the legend is a very effective one, and the guide who tells it to you always gets several francs in addition to his original swindle.
You must have legends, and as people believe them it is the same as though they were true.
An imaginative friend of mine was once standing upon the railroad platform at Forest, Ohio, in the war years, probably the most lonesome and desolate station in the world. There were twenty passengers with him for a train that was so far behind that no one could guess as to when it would arrive.
He had cut a little switch from a tree near the platform, and as he flourished it ostentatiously, some one asked him where he got it.
With a quickness of invention—a fertility of lying that was simply admirable—he said it was the tip of the flag-staff of Fort Donelson!
Now this was nothing but a little switch cut within twenty feet of where they were standing, but immediately all the passengers came up and took it in their hands and examined it critically, and commented on it, as though it were something of actual importance. It was, to them. The battle was discussed, the merits of Grant as a soldier were discussed, and the whole war was with its causes and consequences, reviewed. And all this because a prompt liar, in an impulsive way, located a Forest switch as the tip of the flag-staff of Donelson.
We believed it, and handled the switch reverently. The tourist to Pilatus swallows the legend of Pilate, and it does him just as much good as though it were true.