The next morning, after an early breakfast, I visited Mrs. Grant and the General in their rooms. Mrs. Grant was as kindly mannered as the General himself. One would not have thought them fresh from the attentions of princes and potentates. They told me in an enjoyable way, much about their travels. The General dropped some remarks, too, showing me that the grand scenery he had passed the day before had been noticed very closely by him, silent though he had been.
The contrast between these simple, great people, upstairs in the hotel, and some of the great people downstairs, was very impressive to me. There was not one particle of stiffness or formality in General and Mrs. Grant’s reception of me. It was as if his rank were no greater in the world than my own; simply as if he and his wife had met an unpretentious man to whom they liked to talk, and who would go away feeling that they were friends.
All over Europe, I understand, General Grant and his wife have impressed people in the same way. In every sense, they were preserving their unostentatious, homely American ways.
“Certain comforts and things, I want in traveling, just as at home,” said the General. “I want my little sitting room. I want my ham and eggs for breakfast--and nothing is so hard to get cooked right in Europe, as just these ham and eggs.”
*****
I had a strange trip down the Rigi last Monday morning. I had been staying at the Staffel over Sunday. At ten of Monday, I was to be in Luzern, as an official, to help marry a couple, one of whom was an American. Long before daylight, I was starting down the steep path. It was starlight overhead, and a warm summer morning. Down below, however, the whole valley and all the lakes and hills seemed hidden by a mantle of fog. Every few moments we heard a clap of thunder away down there, or saw a flash of lightning dart along the gray surface. My wife urged me not to descend into clouds that looked so dangerous; but my presence in Luzern was a necessity, and I went ahead. For half an hour my path down the mountain side was dry and beautiful. It was just breaking dawn, when suddenly, and within a few feet distance, I stepped down into a cloud full of water. Instantly I was in a perfect Noah’s flood, and yet I knew a hundred feet above me the stars were shining. The peals of thunder soon seemed to shake the mountains, and the lightning became terrific. A few moments’ walk had brought me out of a dry atmosphere and a quiet morning, into this storm of the Alps. I tried to get back and up the mountain, but I was fairly washed from my feet and the path. In five minutes I was completely lost, and, fearing to tumble off some precipice, I stood stock still. I had reached what seemed a level plateau of tall grass. There I stood till daylight came, and the storm went partly by, when, to my horror, I saw that had I walked another dozen steps I would have gone over a cliff and fallen a thousand feet.
I caught a steamer, however, and reached the city, where the groom divided some of his drier garments with me, and the wedding went merrily on.
*****
Some of the London newspapers are in great wonder over the United States census. A country only a hundred years old, and yet mustering thirty-eight and a half millions of people!! Few European states so large, and none of them so rich and great.
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