APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
As I put forward no claim whatever for originality in this little work, I shall perhaps escape blame from climbers, and earn some thanks from the general public, if I place in the way of the latter a poem, the greater part of which appeared in the Alpine Journal (volume xiv., page 64), and which consequently was not likely to have attracted the attention of the non-mountaineering traveller. Through the courtesy of the author, I am enabled to reprint it in full in these pages. We who spend much of our time amongst “Heaven’s nearest neighbours,” grow to love our surroundings more and more. It is often said that people ascend peaks in order to boast of their achievements. Of some, no doubt, this is true. But I cannot give better proof of how such persons are looked upon by the true mountain-climber than by quoting the lines I have referred to, with the spirit of which I, and thousands more, are entirely in sympathy. The poem, entitled, “Mountain Midgets; or, Thirty Years After,” is supposed to have been copied from a stranger’s book in a well-known mountain resort, and is headed:—
TO MY FELLOW-GUESTS.
(An Original Member of the Alpine Club speaks.)