The Days of a Man 



1890 



The Met 



Blanche 



A 



mountain 

 refuge 



simple-hearted and modest as becomes one who 

 assumes not only the dress but the name and figure 

 of the Saviour. 



Mrs. Jordan and I were lodged with the chief of 

 the money changers in the Temple. The eldest 

 daughter of the house, then fourteen years old, was 

 called Magdalena, perhaps in the hope that some- 

 time the part of Mary Magdalen might fall to her. 

 In 1890 she led the girls in the tableau of the manna. 



Of the many delightful days in Switzerland, and 

 later in Verona, Venice, and Milan, I need again 

 render no account. But while the others were on 

 their way to Rome and Naples, my wife and I 

 followed up the valley of the Po and thence west- 

 ward to Courmayeur on the south side of Mont 

 Blanc. From here we ascended the majestic "Alice 

 Blanche," the "white lane" on the south side of the 

 great mountain from which it appears, as Humboldt 

 averred, like a gigantic white "artichoke surrounded 

 by its leaves." Perhaps no view of Mont Blanc is 

 more impressive than that to be enjoyed from this 

 little-frequented Italian side. 



Leaving Courmayeur after an unforgetable day, 

 we drove down the Dora Baltea to Aosta again, 

 thence up the mountain side to St. Remy and on to 

 the bleak Pass of the Great St. Bernard, on the 

 summit of which stands the famous Hospice es- 

 tablished by Bernard de Menthon upward of a 

 thousand years ago. Here we spent a shivery after- 

 noon and night in the cold stone building by the 

 side of a colder lake. The spacious refectory, how- 

 ever, was partly warmed and in an austere way 

 attractive, while the brothers were distinctly friendly. 

 Outside, the great dogs, headed by the splendic 



