But the language is not more marked by its peculiarities than the manners. There are all sorts of people in every land. Some of each variety go abroad, so that we must expect to meet them, and it is very absurd to judge of a country by the few specimens you meet on the road. But while I am heartily ashamed of some of my own countrymen who are abroad, and make themselves ridiculous by an extravagance of independence that amounts to a contempt of every thing and everybody except themselves and their country, still I think that, as a whole, they are the best behaved people abroad. At the Baur du Lac Hotel, Zurich, day before yesterday, at breakfast, a German lady took her seat at the head of a long table, rested both elbows upon it, and taking a roll of bread eight inches long, held it in both hands, and without taking it from her lips, or taking her elbows down, she ate the whole of it from end to end. I sat next to her, on the corner, and saw it done. She then took another roll, a round one, and devoured that: all this while waiting for her coffee. What more she ate, or how, I did not see, having turned away in disgust. It is not probable that any woman from America would go through such an exercise at home or abroad.
Yesterday, in the rail-car in which I was riding, an English gentleman and family entered the compartment in which I was seated, the only passenger. There were four seats, two on each side of a little table, on which we could lay books or papers. Overhead were racks and pegs for bags and bundles. He piled his, and his wife’s, and his wife’s sister’s, on the top of the table, usurping the whole of it, and utterly ignoring the right of anybody else to any of it. Jonathan would put a thing in its place, and be ashamed to interfere with the convenience of his neighbor. John Bull looks out for number one. This selfishness extends to neglecting those little attentions to women, on which an American prides himself, and which makes it so easy for women in America to travel alone.
On the French and Swiss railroads has been introduced an improvement that may be commended to our directors. In every train there is a car with one compartment, marked on the outside, “For women unattended.” Into this carriage ladies who have no male escort enter, and are properly cared for by the conductor. They can travel in this way in seclusion and with entire safety; but after all it is quite probable that the women in America would be quite as willing to take their chances with the men; and, perhaps, the experiment, if tried, would be a failure. One thing the railway people might learn of us, and that is, to check the baggage. In place of it, here they give you a slip of paper with a number on it, and paste a corresponding slip on your trunk, which is some protection, but not so safe nor so convenient as our plan. In many respects the European railroad system is far, very far, superior to ours. Its safety is incomparably greater than ours. An accident is very rare. I have not heard of one since coming abroad. The connections are invariably made. The track is more solid and secure. The road is made for ages. There are grades of fare according to the accommodation. The first class is better than any of ours. The second is not equal to ours, and the third is inferior to the second.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CANTON APPENZELL—SWISS CUSTOMS.
Peasants of Eastern Switzerland.
You have never been in Trogen. You have never heard of Trogen. You do not know where on the map to look for Trogen, and you probably would not find it, if you looked for Trogen.
Trogen is one of the little villages in Canton Appenzell, in Switzerland. It is reached by carriage from St. Gall, a large town on the railroad from Zurich to Constance. As soon as you leave the line of the rail, you begin to ascend, and it is all the way up, up, up, till you get here. We passed a convent about half the way up, inhabited by nuns, who were once expelled from St. Gall. They have now a rich establishment, very secluded, and perfectly impenetrable in its interior mysteries. You can see the reception rooms and the chapel, and the grating that separates the nuns from you and all the world: that’s all,—no, not quite all; in the chapel they will show you a human skeleton, decked with magnificent jewelry, enough to adorn a princess; and this may teach you that the pomps and vanities of the world are wasted on one who is soon to be a bundle of bones.
When you reach the summit of the hill, a scene of extraordinary grandeur and loveliness lies around and below you. As far as the eye reaches, it is a succession of green, cultured, and peopled hills, often crowned with villages, but mostly marked by scattered dwellings in the midst of beautiful farms, white roads winding around and over the hills, and in the distance, through an opening, lies the lake of Constance, a picture of silver in a fair setting of emerald. Trogen is the largest of the villages; but there are three more in sight, Speicher, Wald, and Rechdobell, each with its single church tower; for the people are all Protestants, and all Lutherans. In this village and Speicher, close by, there is not one Roman Catholic family, and I believe that is a very unusual fact in this country, where there are nearly as many of the one as the other, and they are mingled closely in many of the cantons.