vertically below. (Lantern.) With that absurd nearness of effect
one gets in the Alps, we see the little train a dozen miles away,
running down the Biaschina to Italy, and the Lukmanier Pass beyond
Piora left of us, and the San Giacomo right, mere footpaths under
our feet....

And behold! in the twinkling of an eye we are in that other
world!

We should scarcely note the change. Not a cloud would have gone from
the sky. It might be the remote town below would take a different
air, and my companion the botanist, with his educated observation,
might almost see as much, and the train, perhaps, would be gone out
of the picture, and the embanked straightness of the Ticino in the
Ambri-Piotta meadows--that might be altered, but that would be all
the visible change. Yet I have an idea that in some obscure manner
we should come to feel at once a difference in things.

The botanist's glance would, under a subtle attraction, float back
to Airolo. "It's queer," he would say quite idly, "but I never
noticed that building there to the right before."

"Which building?"

"That to the right--with a queer sort of thing----"

"I see now. Yes. Yes, it's certainly an odd-looking affair.... And
big, you know! Handsome! I wonder----"

That would interrupt our Utopian speculations. We should both