are brothers! We shall be in sympathy. I am amazed, I have been
amazed as long as I can remember, and I shall die, most certainly,
in a state of incredulous amazement, at this remarkable world.
Eh? ... You found yourselves suddenly upon a mountain top! Fortunate
men!" He chuckled. "For my part I found myself in the still stranger
position of infant to two parents of the most intractable
dispositions!"

"The fact remains," I protest.

"A position, I can assure you, demanding Tact of an altogether
superhuman quality!"

We desist for a space from the attempt to explain our remarkable
selves, and for the rest of the time this picturesque and
exceptional Utopian takes the talk entirely under his control....


Section 2

An agreeable person, though a little distracting, he was, and he
talked, we recall, of many things. He impressed us, we found
afterwards, as a poseur beyond question, a conscious Ishmaelite in
the world of wit, and in some subtly inexplicable way as a most
consummate ass. He talked first of the excellent and commodious
trams that came from over the passes, and ran down the long valley
towards middle Switzerland, and of all the growth of pleasant homes
and chalets amidst the heights that made the opening gorge so
different from its earthly parallel, with a fine disrespect. "But
they are beautiful," I protested. "They are graciously proportioned,