Filled with such thoughts, as we beheld the humble but well-kept and ever picturesque dwellings of the farmers of this valley, I called to mind, as a consoling antidote to one's first natural sympathy with poverty, the story of the sultan who, despite all his wealth and power, was always melancholy. He had been told by his physician that, if he would be cured of all his real or fancied ailments, he must exchange shirts with the first perfectly happy man he could find. Out went his officers in search of such a person.
THE GIESSBACH.
The hunt was long and arduous, but finally the fortunate being was found. When he was brought to the sultan, however, it was discovered, alas! that this perfectly happy individual was not the possessor of a shirt.
MOUNT PILATE FROM LUCERNE.
From Interlaken, every tourist makes a short excursion to one of the best known of Alpine waterfalls,—the Giessbach. Set in a glorious framework of dark trees, it leaves the cliff, one thousand feet above, and in a series of cascades leaps downward to the lake. If this descending torrent were endowed with consciousness, I fancy it would be as wretched in its present state as a captive lion in a cage, continually stared at by a curious multitude. For never was a cascade so completely robbed of liberty and privacy as this. A pathway crosses it repeatedly by means of bridges, and seems to bind it to the mountain as with a winding chain. Behind it are numerous galleries where visitors may view it from the rear. Arbors and seats are also placed on either side; and thus, through every hour of the day, people to right of it, people to left of it, people in rear of it, people in front of it, look on and wonder. Even at night it has but little rest; for hardly have the shadows shrouded it, when it is torn from its obscurity by torches, calcium lights, and fireworks, which all along its course reveal it to the admiring crowd in a kaleidoscope of colors.