aboard a brave Italian, with birds in cages and gold-fish in vases, with
a gay Southern face, a coral neck button, a brown mustache and imperial,
and a black-tasselled red fez that consoled. He was the vividest bit of
color in our composition, though we were not wanting in life without
him. There began to be some Americans besides ourselves, and a pretty
girl of our nation, who occupied a public station at the boat's prow,
seemed to know that she was pretty, but probably did not. She will
recognize herself in this sketch; but who was that other pretty maiden,
with brown eyes wide apart, and upper lip projecting a little, as if
pulled out by the piquant-nose? I must have taken her portrait so
carefully because I thought she would work somewhere into fiction; but
the reader is welcome to her as she is. He may also have the
_spirituelle_ English girl who ordered tea, and added, "I want some
kätzchens with my tea." "Kätzchens! Kätzchen is a little cat." "Yes;
it's a word of my own invention." These are the brilliant little
passages of foreign travel that make a voyage to Europe worth while. I
add to this international gallery the German girl in blue calico, who
had so strong a belief that she was elegantly dressed that she came up
on deck with her coffee, and drank it where we might all admire her. I
intersperse also the comment that it is the Germans who seem to prevail
now in any given international group, and that they have the air of
coming forward to take the front seats as by right; while the English,
once so confident of their superiority, seem to yield the places to
them. But I dare say this is all my fancy.

I am sure, however, of the ever-varying grandeur and beauty of the Alps
all round us. Those of the Savoyard shore had a softer loveliness than
the Swiss, as if the South had touched and mellowed them, as it had the
light-colored trousers which in Geneva recalled the joyous pantaloons of
Italy. These mountains moulded themselves one upon another, and deepened