Falls of the Rhine, the Lake of Constance,--in fact, it was a memorable
holiday of travel. Of late we had been tramping slowly up the Valley of
the Reuss. It was a delightful time. It was much more like a stroll than
a tramp. Landing from a Lake of Lucerne steamer in Fluelen, we found
ourselves at the end of the second day, with the dusk overtaking our
leisurely footsteps, a little way beyond Hospenthal. This is not the day
on which the remark was made: in the shadows of the deep valley and with
the habitations of men left some way behind, our thoughts ran not upon
the ethics of conduct, but upon the simpler human problem of shelter
and food. There did not seem anything of the kind in sight, and we were
thinking of turning back when suddenly, at a bend of the road, we came
upon a building, ghostly in the twilight.

At that time the work on the St. Gothard Tunnel was going on, and that
magnificent enterprise of burrowing was directly responsible for the
unexpected building, standing all alone upon the very roots of the
mountains. It was long, though not big at all; it was low; it was built
of boards, without ornamentation, in barrack-hut style, with the white
window-frames quite flush with the yellow face of its plain front. And
yet it was a hotel; it had even a name, which I have forgotten. But
there was no gold laced doorkeeper at its humble door. A plain but
vigorous servant-girl answered our inquiries, then a man and woman who
owned the place appeared. It was clear that no travellers were expected,
or perhaps even desired, in this strange hostelry, which in its severe
style resembled the house which sur mounts the unseaworthy-looking hulls
of the toy Noah's Arks, the universal possession of European childhood.
However, its roof was not hinged and it was not full to the brim of
slab-sided and painted animals of wood. Even the live tourist animal was
nowhere in evidence. We had something to eat in a long, narrow room at
one end of a long, narrow table, which, to my tired perception and to my