Though, agin, what is truth?
Hard question.
Wall, our way on to Lake Geneva wuz like a dream of glory and grandeur, full of mountain peaks, green and snow-clad, and flashin’ waterfalls, with little side dreams of sweet green valleys—“sweet fields arrayed in livin’ green”—quaint villages, cosey little housen, swift dashin’ waterways, and gently flowin’ rivers.
Interlaken, Freiburg, Lausanne, how they look out of the paneramy at me when I shet my eyes in the Jonesville meetin’-house or anywhere, and onto the blue lake that Byron writ so much about.
Alice had beset her Pa to take her to Castle Chillon. And I had strange feelin’s, I can tell you, as I walked down the road with Josiah Allen by my side—from Jonesville meetin’-house to the Castle of Chillon—what a leap! Could Fancy cut up any stranger? I spozed we should have to take a boat to reach it, and so they did in old times, but now the water has filled in so, that, like the Israelites, we passed over dry shod.
The castle is over a thousand years old. Some say the Lake Dwellers built it, and in talkin’ about them queer creeters, who dwelt a thousand years ago in housen built up on posts stuck in the water, I had another trouble with my too ardent and susceptible pardner. Sez he—
“Samantha, what a beautiful way of livin’ that would be—how cool and pleasant in summer weather, and so handy; no luggin’ in water to fill the tank, no pumpin’, jest lean right out of the buttery winder and draw in a pailful, and then how easy to lower the milk in the water to cool. Why, we could have the milk-room built jest below the surface, and set the milk pans right into the lake, as it were. What butter we could make, how it would be sought for! And then the idee of settin’ in your own back door and fishin’ for pike and sturgeons, draw ’em right up and land ’em on the kitchen table, not a foot off from the briler. How convenient! And bathin’ now, you’re always a-tewin’ at me about it—washin’ my feet, it’s always a job—but now jest cut a little hole in the bedroom floor, and with a towel there you are. I’ll commence a house out on our pond the minute I git home for a summer retreat, no mowin’ door-yards, no fences to keep up, no gates to be onhingin’; why, I’d renew my age there, Samantha. And then think of the profit in the extra butter, etc.”
“How would it be about milkin’ the cows?” sez I. I see he hadn’t thought of that or anythin’ else practical, but he’d been jest carried away by the novel and the new.
But he wouldn’t give in, men have such doggy obstinacy. Sez he—
“Why, learn ’em to swim; begin when they’re yearlin’s, learn ’em to strike right out and swim up to the milk-house, hitch ’em to the post, and jest set in the back door and milk ’em.”