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INTERLAKEN—10 P.M. TO 11 P.M. · Around the Clock in Europe : A Travel Sequence

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Section ten of Around the Clock in Europe a Travel Sequence. This is a
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LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Keith sallis Around
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the Clock in Europe A Travel Sequence by Charles Fishhowell. Section ten Interlachen ten
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p m to eleven p m. The top of the evening at brisk,
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embracing Interlochen is certainly ten o'clock. Vigorous, vitalizing air breathes down the lush
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meadows from towering alpine snowfields and languor, and on we fall away from their
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dispirited summer idlers, and a refreshing life interest reasserts itself. It is then
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that one may see the deep flowered lawns that front the great hotels of the
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broad hooveig pleasantly thronged with animated gas us, modestly and immaculately groomed. And
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each little street and quiet lane has its quota of vivacious strollers who prefer the
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key night air and the inspiring mountain prospect to the conventional attractions of the brilliant
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cursow, or the round of mild social diversions that is in progress in the
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hotel apartments. Then, too, there is a certain subdued note of expectancy
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in the air, for this is the little village's fate hour, and almost
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as the valley clocks are striking the hour, the celebration is heralded with a
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burst of rockets from the open field of the Honmta in the center of the
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town, and there is a general rush of chattering guests to see the display
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and to exhibit prodigious approval. All are aware of the fact that this is
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merely an expression in terms of Swiss thrift, of the appreciation the seventy five
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hundred villagers feel for the lucrative presence of thousands of guests, and yet it
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admirably serves as a mid break in the evening's diversions. There is little enough
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to the celebration to be sure accepting the exaggerated importance such an event always assumes
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to isolated summer people. But you would think it was a pyrotechnic marvel to
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judge by the enthusiasm to see Interlocke, and then is to behold her at
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her gayest bridge parties forsake their cards, late diners their ices, and billiard
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as their cues. Each little balcony in the hotel fronts is promptly crowded.
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Orchestras strike up lively strauss waltzes. Troops of delighted guests hurry across the hoveag
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and pour into the meadow, until one might fairly conclude that there was a
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carnival on. From the overflow of laughter and merrymaking, it is always a
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great moment to the corosale. There the excitement seekers have been wandering from parlors
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to lounging rooms and ending up in the cheery gaming hall, where a toy
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train on the long green table darts around a little track laden with the franks
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and many hopes of the modest challengers a fortune, and comes to an exciting
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and leisurely stop before some station with the name of a European capital. Just
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then, like as not, as the croupier begins raking in the scattered piles
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of silver, and the losers are being gleefully accosted by their friends, somebody
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suddenly shouts fireworks, and forthwith all run hurrahing into the gardens and cry out
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like summer children in vast delight over the rockets that go hurling skyward from the
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hoan mate. It is all quite the nature of a very elegant international fate
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which the Old World and Anew have accredited their most reshershay representatives. There is
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seldom a lack of keen activity at Interlachen, but at this hour it is
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most abounding. Nor will the new arrival fare to note the contrast between the
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sharp alertness of this company in the lothargic listlessness that depresses, for instance,
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the bored idlers who bask in the dusky, ear olive gardens of the Riviera.
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In the intermittent glow of the fireworks, cottages and distant hotels spring out
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of the surrounding darkness. The top of a hillside sanatorium appears of a sudden
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white against the dark pines. The pack saddle roof of the church tower discovers
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itself. A turret shows with a red field and white Greek cross of the
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Swiss flag lazily unfolding above it, and one looks anxiously for just one glimpse
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of the old cloisters, round towers and cone shaped roofs. The reminded longfellow
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of all tapers with extinguishers. Music drifts down from remote cafes and pavilions nesting
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in the wooded nooks. The air is heady and buoyant, with a scent
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of pine and fur. Life seems at high tide. And then, just
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as suddenly it is all over, and the gay company resumes its interrupted activities
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with infinite laughter and hand clapping. There is a positive spell all this alpine
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comedy. No new arrival will feel inclined to return at once to hotel conventionalities.
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With a soft purple mist shrouding the louter Brunan Valley and the distant jung
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Frau lying pallid and wan in the moonlight, he will gaze about him in
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wonder at the snow crowned peaks that hem in the little Bodelli plain where inter
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lock and snuggles, and will feel how wonderful it is that the boisterous Lushin
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and its fellow Torrents could ever have filled this i alluvial barrier between the deep
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lakes that fought them inch by inch. He will think of the enchanted regions
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of the bernece Oberland that lie just before him, and of the contrasting beauty
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of the inland seas that stretch away on either hand. Lake Briens, mysterious
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and austere, scowling at its precipitous mountain shores, roaring welcomes to its thundering
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waterfalls and begrudging standing room for the tiniest of hamlets. Lake tuon the riviera
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of Switzerland, with lovely vistas of green meadows, chateau dotted hillsides and distant
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snowy summits, all breathing such mildness and serenity as befitted the former abode of
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the Holy hermit of Sebey Ottenburg. And doubtless he will seek out some tree
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embowered path that winds along the Ara, and there indulge in contemplative thought of
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this glittering blue link between the lakes. Nor could he do better? For
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this arrogant stream is an illustrious instance of a reformed rake of evil repute,
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for riotous cascade and brawling torrent all the way up to its home by the
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Grimsel Pass. It responds to the touch of civilization at Interlachen and meekly accepts
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the bondage of steam for the remainder of its career. What a gratifying example
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of reform it presents as it proceeds demurely along from this scene of moral crisis,
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having thankful little towns reporting conscientiously to the proper authorities at barn and after
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an exhibition review sweep around the capitol, flowing sweetly on to the vauldshut,
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and modestly lying down its burden on the broad bosom of the Rhine. The
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stranger will perceive that virtue has its rewards with rivers as with humans when he
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takes note of the extravagant petting and eulogy that has followed the repentance of the
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Aura at Interlachen, its adornment with promenades, gardens and artistic bridges, and
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the choice of much excellent society, particularly at night, on the part of
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ruminating savants and romantic lovers of all ages. Strolling along the river paths carpeted
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with sweet scented pine needles. The delighted new arrival has only to lift his
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eyes to discover how picturesquely the little city lies in its bed of lush and
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fertile meadows. It will seem to him like a great stage set for a
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mammoth spectacle. For background, there is the black and flinty Harder set with
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a grim rock face of the scowling Hardamany, rugged and boulders and sheer cliffs,
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and hiding its base and treacherous grassy slopes. The Aara skirts it fearfully,
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and the pretty little cottages of Untersen shrink close to Lake Tun on its
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farther's side, prostrate interlock, and lie supine before it, gazing appealingly through
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its innumerable windows, across the open horn Matte, over the beaches and firs
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of the protruding shoulder of the Rugen, and up on the dodging narrow Lute
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Chain valley to the remote and sympathetic Jungfrau. The scene is ready for the
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curtain when you have dotted the mountain slopes with chalets. Or perhaps if the
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stranger is fanciful, he will conceive the alpine ravens, thinking it some enormous
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eagle swooping toward the lauta brunan valley with clustered houses for an attenuated body and
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two lakes for powerful blue wings, beating out and back or again. He
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may be reminded by this group of huge home hotels of some fleet of old
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time ships of the line that started down the valley to bombard the Jungfrau.
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Early in the action. Formation was lost, and the giant hulks drifted about
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in hopeless confusion. Several apparently went prominently aground on the banks of the Aarra,
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right under the precipices of the harder. All the big ones foundered in
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a row along the Hoveg. A number became desperately entangled in the square before
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the Spielmatten Island. Some trailed southward in what we call jungfrauschrase, and others
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in alpinstrase. Here and there, one lies at anchor along the farther meadows,
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waiting for signals from the flagship of the Hoveg, and at last won
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in the guise of an ugly white church, was caught in some violent cross
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current and tossed up high and dry on the bow of the fir smothered gustag
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evening guests who does not fancy reveries along a mile mountain stream, nor yet
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the quiet pacing of the neat lanes that are so characteristic of this immaculate republic
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of spotless towns, whose very flag appropriately suggests the Red Cross Society's similar emblem
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of sanitation, will find it amusing. The loiter along the little shops of
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the village and see the curious wooden trifles of priense and delicately tinted matsilika,
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ware of toune, exquisite ivory carvings, and rare bijutory of filigree silver wrought
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with infinite patience and skill. Tiring of these, he may ramble under the
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fine old walnut trees of the hovegg and congratulate himself that he is not under
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the horse chestnuts of Lucerne, to look out on inferior mountain prospects and breathe
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a less intoxicating air. The most approved form of evening entertainment is a round
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of calls among friends, scattered over the broad lawns of the hotels, when
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one may divert himself with someone. Our orchestras are itinerant bands of Italian singers
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and crimson sashes. Or revel in a rare profusion of beautiful flowers, and
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from time to time look gladly up at a crisp sky blended with great luminous
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stars, whose tremulous ardor, in Walter Pater's famous phrase, burns like a
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gem, is a capital place to gather impressions of what life at Interlocan means
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and what goes forward each day. Among its votaries. It is perfectly plain
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that this must be a great place. Everybody so bubblingly cheerful and so devoutly
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grateful for being just here, in no possible spot else. You will hear
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them insisting that interlock In, being halfway between, is an admirable combination of
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the complacent prettiness of Geneva and the austere solemnity of the vaunted Engadaine Valley.
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Or there will be fragments of conversation reaching you about tennis matches and the Hoenmte
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like bathing in Briennes. Motor bus runs from the golf links of Bodingen,
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where the residents plant a fruit tree whenever a baby is born, or the
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desperate scrambles up the zigzag trails of the harder beloved of Weber, Mendelssohn and
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Wagner with rapturous accounts of the inspiring view from the Coombe. Some you will
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gather have passed the day unevently among the park walks of the Rugen, gazing
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down on Lake Brienz from the Trinkhaala Cafe, or on Lake Tuon from the
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Sheffeo Pavilion, or on both from farther up on the belvedere of the Himway
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flu others. Again, it seems, have actually crossed the mild Wagner Ravine
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and ascended the lofty Abenberg of the grocer Rugen. And for this pitiful adventure
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you hear them pose as veteran mountain conquerors, who will carry their alpenstocks home
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with them, and forever after speak familiarly of Aedelweiss and the flora of the
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Summits. They even appear to have been romantic soul, familiar with Madame de
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Stele's accounts of Saint Berthold festivals, who have spent the hours and dreams of
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Byron's Manfred down by the old round tower of the dilapidated wreckage of Unspoon Castle,
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in truth the most abject of ruins, and quite as forlorn as Marinara's
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molted Grange. Not a few will have the courage to confess that they have
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done nothing more heroic than stroll by the shaded gold eye promenades along the aura
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until they came to unter scene, where they deliberately sat down and gazed to
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Sutayuti at the curious toy houses with long carved balconies and amazing roofs, to
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project beyond all belief. Thus, by merely catching flying ends of talk,
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a stranger may imbibe the proper amount of enthusiasm and gather some rambling notion of
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fine things Interlache and has in store for him. But the real evening heroes
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must be looked for at the coursau. That is where you hear the great
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champion talkers of the world. What was the amy Tartarin to such as these?
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Or Baron Munchausen or Sir John Mandeville, and such deaf ears fell the
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warning ignored of Excelsior. Beware the pine trees, weathered branch, Beware the
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awful avalanche. Behold them at their ease, and wicker chairs in the lounging
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rooms, stretching the weary limbs that have borne them in safety through a hundred
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alpine perils. For all will listen what tales may be heard of desperate daring
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amid the imminent deadly breach of crevasse and avalanche. Under the vivid hand of
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the actual participant, one fairly sees the progress of the proud mountain. Kuvella
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follows with bated breath, the slow and tedious early stages, the hazardous upward
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advance, the surmounting of final barriers by dint of ice axe and life rope,
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and so enters into the joy, the ultimate conquest of the wild,
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bleak, wind swept summit. Who would have the the hardihood and such a
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presence the speak a word of such contemptible contrivances as mountain tramways and for nicular
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railroads. It is enough that the uninitiated should realize, in the shuddering depths
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of his soul, that there still remains terra incognita to the listless, the
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fat, and the asthmatic. Later on, of course, we come to
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view these hardy characters in a somewhat truer perspective, but that will be after
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we have talked with their guides or ourselves turned heroes and bluffed at like hazards.
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All the same, there is no denying the satisfaction a newcomer has in
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the beginning. In ascending the impressive conversation of these desperate and intrepid coursile adventures,
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he certainly feels that he has at last reached a region of hardy men
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and genuine mountain hand to hand struggles. He hears with popping eyes of the
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lofty little hamlet of Mirran away up in cloudland, whose tiny cottages stagger under
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broad stone freighted roofs, and where vast sublime titans scowl awfully from inaccessible heights.
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They tell him it is a region of eternal, dazzling whiteness, with
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patches of black here and there that are really forests half buried in snow,
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and where the air is stifling with the constant odour of ice and frost.
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A truly shuddering place, they say, where men cannot hear themselves talk for
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the incessant thundering of plunging avalanches, and where the herdsman seldom ventures, and
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the sunrise is never helded by the alphorn of the hardy sin. Later on,
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to be sure, we journey luxuriously to the same murdin in a comfortable
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mountain railway, and with considerably less peril than attends going to office by elevator,
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and a skyscraper at home, and we find it a green and peaceful
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retreat, well supplied with hotels and gratefully affected by delicate old ladies with weak
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lungs. Just the same we would not have missed the thrills of the first
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Cursal account alas for all disillusion meant anyway, most of the beautiful white velvety
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Aedelweiss, these rocking chair climbers, produced from their pockets in proof of their
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presence in frightful and remote ravines, has really been bought for a franc in
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the hoveg And this chamis they stalked in summit passes, generally dwindled down to
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the little ivory ones you find in the shops of the Jungfraustrasa. The truth
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of the Cursow, when you get it, is stranger than its fiction,
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as when the talk turns to the progress of the construction work on the Jungfrau
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railway, that imperishable monument to the genius and patience of the late Adolf Geyer,
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Cellar of Zurich. It is then you hear of the loftiest tunnels in
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the world eight and ten miles long through icy mountain shoulders ten thousand feet above
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the sea of gradients of one and four of squirrel r locomotives so ingeniously contrived
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that if the electric power were suddenly to fail, they could generate enough by
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their own weight to clap on the brakes and come down in safety of search
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lights in the stations on the peaks so strong that a man can read by
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them away over at toon of powerful telescopes free to patrons, through which you
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may observe the occupations of the crowds on the rigi and mount pilatus at remote
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lucerne of roomy and luxurious stations blasted out of the depths of the mountains,
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whose floors are parquetry, and whose light and heat are electricity, with twenty
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foot windows piercing the rock, and appearing even from across a neighboring abyss,
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like tiny pin pricks in the perpendicular cliff of the highest post office on Earth,
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from whose windows you look out on twenty glaciers. Of the truth of
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all this you are to learn later on when you make the unforgettable run to
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Ismere Sea of Ice. The farthest points so far attained In the steady progress
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of this marvelous railway towards the summit of the Jungfrau, now only a mile
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or two beyond, and which had been the despair of mountain climbers all the
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time until the Meyer brothers conquered it one hundred years ago, one finds the
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evening gossipers of a cursile scarcely less fascinating when they focus on their talents on
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the nearer regions, For distant meadows are not always the greenest agreeable things are
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to be heard of the Shanegee plot, whither it appears. You journey by
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cogwheel railway, up steep gradients in an observation car behind a violently puffing locomotive,
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past pretty toy stations, around dizzy corners, through the startling blackness of
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unexpected tunnels, and so on out and up to the giddy plateau in an
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overpowering prospect of snow fields, misty valleys, gorges and catt upon which you
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gaze in spellbound astonishment from the comfortable terrace of the alp and rose. From
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no other viewpoint, they tell you, does the stupendous monk seems to stand
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out so squarely in the middle distance in his cowl of snow, playing his
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traditional role of discouraging Duenna, between the coveted jung Frau and the eager Eiger,
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whom he repels with an eternal arm of glittering blue ridge ice. When
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a conversation takes up Grindewald, it becomes so attractive that you make a mental
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note to go there the first thing in the morning. It seems you are
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to take one of those droll coaches of the baronese Oberlin road marked Bay Obey,
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and proceed delightedly up the green valley of the loose chain. Very soon
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will loom before you, the bleak shoulders of the vetter Horn, seared and
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precipitous, capped and pocketed with snow, the overwhelming period of the Eiger,
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fearful with gorge and chasm. The regal Jungfrau, immaculate and stupendous, and
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most uncommon spectacle of all the awesome inspiring glacier, a frozen tumble of scarred
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boulders and grimy icebergs, pierced by glittering ice and ridge, with terraced ways,
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from which you stare down into yawning black gulfs that are fringed with giant
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icicles pendent from the frozen ledges. What was the colored said of glaciers Torrance.
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Methinks that heard a mighty voice and stopped at once submid their maddest plunge,
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motionless torrents, silent cataracts. But many there will be at the cursile
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to tell you such tales of the enchanted lauter Brunnen Valley, as to incline
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you to reconsider any resolution about going first to Grindevald. There it is clear
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we are de fine quality rather than quantity. A narrow ravine through the mountains,
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carpeted with the greenest turf, and hung with glorious waterfalls that come tumbling
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down from lofty limestone precipices. We are to drive beside a turbulent stream,
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set with occasional chalets, whose projecting roofs will suggest broad brimmed hats jammed down
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over their eyes. And here and there we shall come across a white stone
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church. Shortly there will be raging, leaping torrents all about us, vaulting
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down Greek cliffs of strange and startling appearance, and a vista of wonderland will
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open before us with a stately Steinberg enthroned in the midst next climax on climax,
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the incomparable Staubach. Before this queen of cataracts. Every other hanging thread
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is instantly and hopelessly dwarfed. As it launches its wreaths of dangling water smoke
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from a thousand feet above, we shall think this dust brook a more feathery
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spray fluttered on capricious breeze. So astonishing is the evidence of the resistance of
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the air and the friction of rocks back it. But once we have gone
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behind it and observe the perpetual iris made by the sun and shining through it,
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will appear a wonder beyond classification. Byron fancied it the tail of the
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white horse. Wordsworth called it the sky born waterfall, and goth stripping song
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of it runs in clouds of spray like silver dust, a veils the rock
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in rainbow hues, and dancing down with music soft is lost in air.
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Lesser lights are to be found among the Cursaw heroes, who will confess to
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nothing more unusual in the way of activity than salmon fishing in the neighboring lakes,
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or bagging red partridge and hazel hens in the upper meadows. But these,
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by contrast appears sportsmen of so mean an order that the stranger who has
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fed fat on the succulent yarns of the Mounchausens receives with impatience information for which
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in fact he should be grateful. For instance, that in in the winter
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the thermometers of the higher settlements get down to fifty four below freezing, and
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yet the dry air keeps people warmer than in the valleys, And that the
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snow falls in such incredible quantities that artificial lights have to be used in the
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lower stories of the houses all day, and trenches cut for exit. That
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up there, when terrific foone blows from the south, no man can make
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headway against it, but must lie flat on his face and hang on,
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and then jump up and dart forward a few yards between gusts. That those
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people can foretell the weather by changes in the color of the ice blue meaning
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fine green for snow and white for fog. That the alpine crows of the
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summits are dark blue with yellow beaks and red feet, and the wall creepers
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are gray as mice with white and red spots on their wings, and with
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beaks shaped like awls. At some such point as this, the stranger will
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rise with a yawn and go away in disgust, annoyed at being taken for
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a credulous fool. The seed, however, has been sown, and it
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flourishes like the fabled mustard. The new arrival becomes a confirmed zealot and burns
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with all the ardor of a convert, albeit his brain is a confused and
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bewildered muddle of harsh sounding mountain names, all apparently ending in horn. When
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he comes out on the lawns, he finds the guests still thronging the Verandahs,
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although it is nearly eleven and prodigies of mountaineering are slated for the morrow,
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and he hears the bands still engaged with Puccini and the latest Vienna successes.
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In the fragrant dewey gardens, fountains are playing and lovers are discreetly screening
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behind clumps of flowering shrubs. Returning excursionists are exceedingly vocal over the illumination of
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the Geistbach, whence they have just arrived in one of those pompous lake steamers,
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whose sure and cautious pace reminded the satirical Victor Tissault of the dignified motion
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of a canal boat. To hear these enthusiasts, this appears to have been
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one more of those exceptional occasions that the absent are always missing, and that
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the renowned waterfall never before roared and tumbled and foamed half so extravagantly in making
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its long, mad plunge through the dusky, dark green furs. Out on
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the hoveg A walking party in knickerbockers and hob nailed shoes, and with adolvieis
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stuck in green felt hats, are flourishing the alpenstocks and driving bargains with sunburned
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guides, whose names undoubtedly are either Melchi or Matius. These latter, we
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are to learn, are of a fearless but canny and laconic nature, economical
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as gypsies, and punctual as executioners. How keenly people take their pleasures in
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the sparkling evenings of Interlachen, How sharp and distinct are sounds and sights,
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and how varied the night life. Each little street is gaily illuminated as though
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for some special celebration, and so hearty with good cheer that one looks for
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some band of Bernese wrestlers returning in triumph from a festival, to round the
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next corner and strike up that clarion anthem stay feest oh Vaterland. It would
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seem as though the Fete dumiet must actually be in full swing right here instead
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of afar in the upland pastures. Even at this hour, a joyful multitude
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still streams along under the hovegs centry, old walnuts, hatless, radiant,
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embabbling in every European tongue. They flock about the confectioners stands, and in
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and out of the curiosity chalets, greeting acquaintances with eager pleasure, and proposing
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jolly plans for tomorrow. Each little shop seems selling to capacity. Occasionally a
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peasant girl passes, brusque and stolid in short skirt and bright bodice with v
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shaped rows of ad de ice buttons. Out on the green hormate, lively
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groups loiter about aimlessly, and somewhere in the vague distance someone has seen the
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ever popular Tristi Morganatahar, the thickly wooded Rugen seems a colossal black mastiff asleep
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with its head between its paws, away up in the misty valley, whose
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vital air is so sweet with refreshing odors and so soothing with soft music.
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The regal young Frau looms in dim and spectral outline, as ghostly and deceptive
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as any faint feathering of cumulus clouds a distant yodel, or the lilt of
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a plaintive rende de vache excites cordial thoughts of this fair Helvetia and her strong
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and devoted people. I wonder, a friend once said to me at Interlachan,
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if these men and women really appreciate how lovely the country it is.
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Perhaps the best answer is to be found in the desperate resolution with which they
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have held it for six hundred years. Our necessity has taught these brawny mountaineers,
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whom mister Ruskin ungenerously called ungenerous and unchivalrous, that to be painfully economical
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is wiser than the chance privation. One thinks with wonder of the hardships endured
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by the herdsman away up in the mountain pastures, eating his sweet bread and
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draining his milk filled wooden bowl in a rude pine hut, with goats and
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kind for comrades and for his sole diversion. An occasional glimpse of a leaping
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chammois a sly mountain fox, a white hare, or the whistling rat like
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shadowy Marmau. With his long outpourn, he calls the cattle home, or
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sounds the vesper hour, until the loud echoes shout back from the snowfield and
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ice gorge, and the great ravens swerve in their swimming flight. In so
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summer, fluttering clouds of butterflies will drift above the pansies and alpine roses and
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gentians on this meadow. But in winter the pallid, velvetyed of ice is
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all the huntsmen will find on these frozen ledges. What a wild and tragic
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region it must be. When the last sin has driven is herd down into
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the valleys, and old Winter is in undisturbed possession of his dear domestic cave.
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The herdsman may rejoice that he is not there. Then, for becomes
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a world of black and white, of inlimitable snow and blotches of black forests,
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of death and waste and the frightful stillness of stupendous heights. Then it
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is a deserted realm of ice and snow, set with pitfalls of treacherous crevasses
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and dreadful perils from hidden gulfs and pitiless avalanches, a shuddering space of cloud
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banks and waving vapor scarfs, a haunted borderland of sinister shapes, and the
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wryth mysts like wraiths of alpine legends. Even so hundreds of failing foreigners go
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a long way up in those forbidding regions in the winter, or an enthusiasm
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of the blood and a fairy titillation of the nerves. And when the days
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are bright and of their peculiar crystal clearness, and the skies are a cloudless
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blue and the sunshine of deluge, these invalids revel in skating and curling and
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the hockey they call bandy, and will even try appalling flights by ski and
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toboggan through the nipping and eager air over smooth trails of glistening snow, rivaling
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the records of the Blue Ribbon Shalstop course at Davos, where they do the
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two mile run, and something other four minutes. There is a chance observation
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in Silas Marner that youth is not exclusively the period of folly of a summer
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evening. However, it might not be altogether unpleasant in some parts of that
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cloud land. Could we return with a happy little mule boy who has just
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now come yodling down from the passes. Doubtless we should find the sound of
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goat bells, both romantic and soothing, up there, and might even in
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time must respectable show of excitement over the passage of the four horse diligences as
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a rattle by in storms of dust. Certainly we should come across many a
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charming little wayside inn far up those winding roads that climbed a solitude, and
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they would have overhanging eaves and curved wooden balconies and boxes of rich orange nesterniums
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before the tiny windows with the lozenge panes. And when we pushed open the
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door and walked in, there'd be a great stone stove in a bar parlor,
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and the face of William Tell on an old clock behind the door,
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one reads in hyperion of a stolid Englishman, so far forgetting his cherished reserve.
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As you exclaim, this Interlachen, this interlachen, It is the loveliest
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spot on the face of the earth. It is a nice question as to
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whether anyone might not easily be guilty of like enthusiasm, provided a time or
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evening, and that he were capable of responding to something of such passionate sympathy
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for mountain and valley as breaths through Schiller's Wilhelm tell it is impossible not to
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be moved by such unusual beauty or uplifted by such sublimity. Here jangled nerves
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recover rhythm and dulled interest, vitality, boredom and on way fall away,
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and work and responsibility acquire new value and luster in the still of these pine
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scented evenings, luminous with enormous stars, and keen and sobering joy of life
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takes full and welcome possession. Here, if anywhere the sun of youth will
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have its afterglow. There is something like benediction in a night vision of the
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magic jung Frau, peerless bride of quietness, with such an appealing spectacle in
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view. What was er that the houses have so many windows, or the
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night a thousand eyes? It is a master touched to Interlachen, completing and
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glorifying the picture as it banks the far end of the valley with towering clouds
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of snow. Neither mont Blanc nor the mater Horn may rival this queen of
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the Alps. So charming an outline, vast in bulk and ravishing in purity,
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it could not fail to dominate any region of Earth, and Interlachan acknowledges
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its supremacy with a completeness that is not without a certain flavor of proprietorship.
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Each hillside has its view pavilion, belvedere, or simple clearing, like so
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many chapels for devotion. We come each morning for our sunrise, view past
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the day in adoration, marvel at sunset and the afterglow, and close the
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evening with a wundervist contemplation of the phantom peak and moonlight of these stations of
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the mount. The afterglow is the climax, nor is the reason far to
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seek. Once you have stood among the odd and reverent throng the crowds of
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horn Mata each late afternoon, and have seen black night about you in the
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valley, while for an hour or more after the snow fields of the Young
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Frow's summit still continued to blaze brilliantly in full sunshine. And then as we
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watched, there came the color miracle of glittering white, merging into every hue
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of the rose, into scarlet stains, and a deluge of crimson, into
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deepening tints and somber shades of blue, and finally fading gradually into a misty,
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grayish, cloudy shadow. As the last fires burned out, the great
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Mountain pale to a phantom of the night. When daylight eyes the azure skies
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seemed sparkling with a thousand eyes. They watch with grace from depths of space,
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the sleeping Young Frow's lovely face. How spirit like, how faint and
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fair? The Magic Mountain swims at night among its silver cloud veils. What
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serenity and majesty invest it did God hear plan another flood and stay his hand
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when he had heaped an angry ocean into this dread tidal wave and left it
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piled in suspended motion, with giant frozen seas, furious with foam, mounting
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to that appalling crust that seems to dash its icy spray against the very skies.
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No man may look with undaunted heart upon the chaos of its glittering snowy
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plains, vast, chase and spectral in the moonlight. How base and contemptible
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appear the petty pursuits of man in presence of such thrilling sublimity, and reconciles
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him to his lot in life, where his much is really so very little,
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and inspires courage and shames the heart. From low, ignoble ends.
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There is reverent awe and thoughts of the breathless hush of the far white veils.
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No man has trod the remote and shuddering abysses into which the very birds
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of the air look down with affright. There is magic of inspiration, in
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sublime aloofness, as with those unheard melodies that are sweetest, those supremest joys
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that lie beyond attainment. Through the hidden, echoing caverns of this fair,
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pallid mount wan spirits of Snowland may even now be dancing along its lonely,
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lovely glades. Are horns of Elfland, faintly blowing of its profoundest and most
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secret mysteries. Not even the friendly moon may have too curious knowledge mysteries unknown
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of man since first the morning Stars sang together. End of Section ten Interlaken
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recording by Keith Sallus