SOMETHING OF SWITZERLAND.
Zurich, Switzerland, July 12, 1905.
Switzerland is a succession of beautiful lakes, mountains and big hotels, dotted here and there with manufacturing towns and vineyards. It has been said that you cannot get too much of a good thing, but that is a mistake. Even the man who loves pie must admit that after he has had all the pie he can consume three times a day for a week, he would want to change the subject. After one has been traveling through Swiss scenery for seven days he is almost satisfied. We no longer chase across the car to see a big mountain-peak, or hurry out of the hotel soon after our arrival to behold the lake. And men and women with feathers in their hats and alpenstocks in their hands do not make us turn our heads. The sight of a little level country would look mighty good, and a comfortable seat on the porch comes nearer to filling the longing in my heart than the sight of a waterfall or an old castle several minutes’ walk distant.
Lucerne is the center of the tourist travel. All roads into Switzerland lead to Lucerne, and the scenery is more varied than at any other of the show places. The town is on the lake and the mountains are around it. From my hotel I could see Mount Pilatus, the place where they say Pontius Pilate finally found a resting-place. At the other end of the view is the snow-covered Rigi, and there are all kinds of Alps in the background. Lucerne looks like an American summer resort. It is made up of hotels and souvenir shops, and elegantly dressed women parade up and down the promenade walks, while rich old gentlemen sit uncomfortably around the piazzas and wish the women-folks had let them stay at home. It is astonishing how many men act as if they would give a good deal to be at work somewhere rather than in Switzerland “enjoying themselves.” A lot of people do not know how to have a good time or how to see a strange and delightful place. I meet many people who do not care for Europe, or Italy, or Switzerland,—the people who bring a stack of trunks and good clothes and have to put in their time dressing up only to be out-dressed by somebody else.
But Lucerne has one thing different. It is the “Lion of Lucerne,” the monument erected in honor of the Swiss soldiers who died in the French palace defending the rotten Bourbon dynasty when the revolutionists broke in and captured the king and queen. The lion (twenty-eight feet in length) is carved out of a sandstone ledge, and is the finest monument or statue I ever saw. The king of beasts is dying, agony on his face, a broken lance in his side, and his huge paw resting on a shield of the lilies of France. The more I looked at the great work of Thorwaldsen the more I felt it, and I went back again and again to see it,—the real test of effect. Nearly everyone has seen copies or pictures of this work, but it is one of the things that no copy can do justice to, for the size and substance of the stone, the pathos and power of the subject and the skill and the genius of the sculptor have met most perfectly and impressively.
Near Lucerne is the scene of the early struggle for Swiss liberty. Around the lake of Lucerne are the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, whose representatives met some 500 years ago and entered into the compact to stand together for freedom, a compact which has never been broken. Here William Tell refused to take off his hat to the hat the tyrant Gessler had set up and ordered all to salute. To punish Tell the governor ordered him to take his bow and arrow and shoot an apple from the head of his son. Tell’s aim was true, but as he turned away another arrow dropped from his coat. When asked why he had that, he said it was for Gessler if the boy had been hurt. Gessler took Tell in a boat and was carrying him to a dungeon, when a storm arose and Tell was released in order to use his skill as a boatman. He knew that the world wasn’t big enough for both himself and Gessler, so he soon after inserted an arrow into the tyrant’s ribs, and the Austrians had to get a new governor.
Some cynical historians doubt this Tell story, but I do not. It is just as good a story as a lot which appear in history and it is good enough to be true.