[Gutenberg 31678] • In the Border Country

Most of us prefer to spend our holiday tours away from our own country. There is a feeling of mild adventure when the land we behold is unknown to us, and when the language we hear filters into our questioning minds through an interpreter's suavity and chatter. And if we go to Switzerland we may earn even a reputation for intrepid pluck among the friends who listen to us on our return home, while the unlucky guides, who found for our trembling feet a pathway around each danger, will amuse their families during the winter with little tales at our expense, told with rough satire and with short, gruff peals of laughter resembling the noise of a crackling ice-sheet when it begins to slip downhill.