“Hotel de l’’Ecu de G’en`eve.”

“Don’t you do it!  No Americans there!  You stop at one of those big hotels over the bridge—­they’re packed full of Americans.”

“But I want to practice my Arabic.”

“Good gracious, do you speak Arabic?”

“Yes—­well enough to get along.”

“Why, hang it, you won’t get along in Geneva—­they don’t speak Arabic, they speak French.  What hotel are you stopping at here?”

“Hotel Pension-Beaurivage.”

“Sho, you ought to stop at the Schweitzerhof.  Didn’t you know the Schweitzerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland? —­look at your Baedeker.”

“Yes, I know—­but I had an idea there warn’t any
Americans there.”

“No Americans!  Why, bless your soul, it’s just alive with them!  I’m in the great reception-room most all the time.  I make lots of acquaintances there.  Not as many as I did at first, because now only the new ones stop in there —­the others go right along through.  Where are you from?”

“Arkansaw.”

“Is that so?  I’m from New England—­New Bloomfield’s my town when I’m at home.  I’m having a mighty good time today, ain’t you?”

“Divine.”

“That’s what I call it.  I like this knocking around, loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking.  I know an American, soon as I see him; so I go and speak to him and make his acquaintance.  I ain’t ever bored, on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk.  I’m awful fond of talking when I can get hold of the right kind of a person, ain’t you?”

“I prefer it to any other dissipation.”

“That’s my notion, too.  Now some people like to take a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things, but that ain’t my way; no, sir, if they like it, let ’em do it, I don’t object; but as for me, talking’s what I like.  You been up the Rigi?”

“Yes.”

“What hotel did you stop at?”

“Schreiber.”

“That’s the place!—­I stopped there too.  Full of Americans,
wasn’t it?  It always is—­always is.  That’s what they say. 
Everybody says that.  What ship did you come over in?”

“Ville de Paris.”

“French, I reckon.  What kind of a passage did ... excuse me a minute, there’s some Americans I haven’t seen before.”

And away he went.  He went uninjured, too—­I had the murderous impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me; I found I hadn’t the heart to kill him, he was such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.