The Young Man who Knows Everything ambled in at this point with the remark that worms were made for sparrows, and the sparrows know it. It is a beautiful provision of nature that the strong eat the weak. If intellect and strength won’t provide a living, what is the use of intellect and strength. A man might as well be a fool as anything else, if he can’t live on his mental endowments.
Which, as it had no earthly application to the subject under discussion, was characteristic, very. But it satisfied him.
But you had better not express any doubt as to Tell to any of the Swiss, especially in this region. They believe in him as firmly as Americans do in Washington, and in the apple as steadily as we do in the hatchet. There was a book published in Berne, proving Tell to be a myth, and it was suppressed by the government, and all the copies in circulation siezed and burned.
Tell is a national pride, and besides, the legend brings tourists into the country, and keeps them longer after they come, which is a matter of national profit. And so, between pride and profit, they keep up the fiction, and will, to the end of time.
However, I still believe in Washington’s hatchet, and in Franklin’s eating bread in the streets of Philadelphia. I am going to cling to something of my youth. But I suppose somebody will disembowel these legends in the course of time, and life thereafter will be as monotonous as a mill-pond—all on a dead level.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
ZURICH AND STRASBURG.
LEAVING Lucerne, Mont Pilatus and the Rigi behind us, we speed rapidly on through pleasant valleys and fragrant meadows. The country loses its high, mountainous nature, and becomes a level, well-farmed district, extremely pleasant after three weeks of nothing but huge mountains, steep passes and rugged hills. Mountain scenery is all very well in its way, but one can have too much of it. A little is quite sufficient.
Zurich is a beautiful city, lying around the head of the lake of the same name. The old portion dates back to the twelfth century, and contains many interesting relics of that period. But around the old part there has grown up a fine modern city, whose solid substantial buildings, of fine architecture, contrast strangely with the old houses and churches that were built centuries ago.
Its location could not be more beautiful. In front is the clear pale-green lake, from which the limpid Limmat emerges and divides the city into two parts. Its shores are lined with picturesque villas, peeping out from among the orchards and vineyards that clothe the banks, clear to the foot of the snow clad Alps which form a strong background, being so far away that they are soft and subdued in the hazy air that partly obscures them from view.
The pride of Zurich is her schools, indeed all of German Switzerland is proud to recognize this place as its educational center. For centuries it has enjoyed this distinction, and its University, founded in 1832, is maintaining in these years the reputation of the city.