A Tramp Abroad — Volume 05 by Mark Twain
page 39 of 86 (45%)
page 39 of 86 (45%)
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he was the only man who had traveled extensively;
but now everybody goes everywhere; and Switzerland, and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer. But I digress. In the morning, when we looked out of our windows, we saw a wonderful sight. Across the valley, and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand, the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white into the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands. It reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows which swells suddenly up beside one's ship, at sea, sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, and the rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam. I took out my sketch-book and made a little picture of the Jungfrau, merely to get the shape. [Figure 9] I do not regard this as one of my finished works, in fact I do not rank it among my Works at all; it is only a study; it is hardly more than what one might call a sketch. Other artists have done me the grace to admire it; but I am severe in my judgments of my own pictures, and this one does not move me. It was hard to believe that that lofty wooded rampart on the left which so overtops the Jungfrau was not actually |
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