“I haven’t. My first trip. But we’ve been all around—Paris and everywhere. I’m to enter Harvard next year. Studying German all the time, now. Can’t enter till I know German. I know considerable French—I get along pretty well in Paris, or anywhere where they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at?”
“Schweitzerhof.”
“No! is that so? I never see you in the reception-room. I go to the reception-room a good deal of the time, because there’s so many Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances. I know an American as soon as I see him—and so I speak to him and make his acquaintance. I like to be always making acquaintances—don’t you?”
“Lord, yes!”
“You see it breaks up a trip like this, first rate. I never got bored on a trip like this, if I can make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to. But I think a trip like this would be an awful bore, if a body couldn’t find anybody to get acquainted with and talk to on a trip like this. I’m fond of talking, ain’t you?
“Passionately.”
“Have you felt bored, on this trip?”
“Not all the time, part of it.”
“That’s it!—you see you ought to go around and get acquainted, and talk. That’s my way. That’s the way I always do—I just go ’round, ’round, ’round and talk, talk, talk—I never get bored. You been up the Rigi yet?”
“No.”