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Show HOTEL LIFE IN THE ALPS. The sense of freedom from restraint is one of the things which most pleases the city man when he gets into Switzerland. Of course he will find restrains enough if he gets into a hotel filled with solemn ponderous English who have brought London and Scarboro' into the mountains with them, and who cannot be happy until they have read the Times every morning; or if he falls upon an auberge crammed with lean but ponderous Germans from the North, Germany who fear fresh air, but who do not fear to walk on his toes, talk and smoke in his face, and treat him generally as if he were of no consequence unless he resents it sharply. But if he is wise, either from experience or by nature, and carefully avoids too close contact with the too formal and the too uncivil, he can enjoy his liberty in famous fashion. He will find, unluckily, that the German cook is in almost every Swiss hotel kitchen. This is melancholy, but I fear that it cannot be helped. Even in Geneva you find the beefsteaks? and the fried potatoes have a German accent. There is a suspicion of sorrel and caraway in many dishes in which civilized people do not expect to discover them. He will also see a vast deal of jugglery with cutlery. Yet I observe with a certain sense of pain that the Prussians are beginning to eat with their forks. I had hoped that they would have struck out freely on a new path, and, after having eaten with their knives for a couple of centuries, would finish by bestowing their food in their lean cheeks by means of their sabers. But alas, I am doomed to disappointment. By and by all the world will have good manners at table, and there will be naught left to cavil at. The Swiss are still true to the old juggling pastime; they insert three-fourths of their knife blades in their throats every time that they prepare a mouthful for mastication. They seem also to cherish a certain enmity toward the table, and set remote from it, only venturing to put their elbows on it. They are like their German neighbors, very much afraid of fresh air when they are in the house. If you leave a window open on the mildest of evenings, in a room where they are present, they quietly go and shut it, without asking your leave. They consider you a madman. |