a chapel, built, it is said, upon the spot where Tell leaped from the boat of Gesler, the Austrian tyrant, while on his way to prison, and shot him. It is a pretty little structure, at the water’s edge, and is every year visited by thousands of people who come to enthuse over the alleged Swiss patriot.
I should have enthused with the rest, only ever since I have been in Switzerland I have been investigating Tell, and to my profound grief I find that like Sairy Gamp’s Mrs. Harris, “There ain’t no sich a person,” and never was.
TELL’S CHAPEL, LAKE OF LUCERNE.
When I say to my profound grief, I mean it. In my boyhood—alas, that was many a year ago—I had several pet heroes among men and things. Tell shooting the arrow off his boy’s head and saving another arrow to shoot Gesler had he harmed his son, was one of them; Jackson and his cotton bales at New Orleans was another; the maelstrom, sucking down whales and ships, as depicted in the school geographies, was another; and then came Wellington with his “Up guards and at ’em,” at Waterloo, the quiet but heroic General Taylor at Monterey with his “A little more grape, Captain Bragg!” with others too tedious to mention. Among my especial hatreds was the cruel King Richard, of England, who slaughtered the infant princes in the tower.
HISTORICAL ROMANCE.