BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
75 
tains absolutely free from clouds or mist. She was struck with 
the beautiful and artistic carvings on the exteriors of the 
many chalets that she saw, in contrast to the dirt and squalor 
that prevailed within, and the pale and pinched faces of 
women and children, testifying to the poor food, hard work, 
and miserable surroundings. She learned that the guides had 
a hard time to make both ends of the year meet, the season 
being short, and their families often large. She felt sorry for 
the expressionless faces of the people whom she saw. “The 
little children look like old people, as if even at birth the age 
of the mountains had reflected itself upon them.” She was 
amused at the absurd cut of their clothes; the men wearing 
homespun of snuff-brown color. “Some of the older men, 
when dressed in their best, have the tail of the coat cut very 
short like an abbreviated dress-coat. Their boots are of the 
clumsiest make with wooden soles and leather tops. ... A 
story is told of how one of the mountaineers thus dressed went 
to camp, and the officer who made the inspection to see if 
his uniform and boots were right, looked with his one eyeglass 
at such a pair of nailed, solid boots which the poor fellow had 
brought, and asked him how he could fight in such boots. 
The mountaineer replied, ‘Your boots are to run in, mine 
are to stand in.’ With this he stamped his foot on the ground, 
and looked with contempt on the thin shoes of the exquisite.” 
At the Hotel de l’Ours, at Grindel wald, she was delighted 
not only with the homelike food and accommodations, but 
also with the whole family of the proprietress, which con¬ 
sisted of a lovely, refined girl, speaking very good English, 
and seven sons. One of these sons, an alert, intelligent youth, 
beaming all over with the daring and manliness that come 
from an open-air, adventurous life, had been out chamois 
hunting in the mountains for two days, and, more fortunate 
than the famous Tartarin of Tarascon, had bagged one of 
those rare deer. He had spent the night before camping out 
in the deep snow, with the cold so intense that it had frozen 
his bread, wine, and cheese. She says: — 
“He was a Protestant, and spoke of the two Swiss parties 
being powerfully divided on religious grounds, the Catholics 
