It was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner added largely to the enjoyment; the having something especial to look forward to and muse about, like the approaching grandeurs of Meiringen, sharpened the zest.  Smoking was never so good before, solid comfort was never solider; we lay back against the thick cushions silent, meditative, steeped in felicity.

I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started.  I had been dreaming I was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake up and find land all around me.  It took me a couple seconds to “come to,” as you may say; then I took in the situation.  The horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of a town, the driver was taking beer, Harris was snoring at my side, the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, was sleeping on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children were gathered about the carriage, with their hands crossed behind, gazing up with serious and innocent admiration at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun.  Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly as big as themselves in their arms, and even these fat babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest in us.

We had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery!  I did not need anybody to tell me that.  If I had been a girl, I could have cursed for vexation.  As it was, I woke up the agent and gave him a piece of my mind.  Instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for being so wanting in vigilance.  He said he had expected to improve his mind by coming to Europe, but a man might travel to the ends of the earth with me and never see anything, for I was manifestly endowed with the very genius of ill luck.  He even tried to get up some emotion about that poor courier, who never got a chance to see anything, on account of my heedlessness.  But when I thought I had borne about enough of this kind of talk, I threatened to make Harris tramp back to the summit and make a report on that scenery, and this suggestion spiked his battery.

We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the seductions of its bewildering array of Swiss carvings and the clamorous Hoo-hooing of its cuckoo clocks, and had not entirely recovered our spirits when we rattled across a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered the pretty town of Interlaken.  It was just about sunset, and we had made the trip from Lucerne in ten hours.

CHAPTER XXXII [The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]

We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those huge establishments which the needs of modern travel have created in every attractive spot on the continent.  There was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual, one heard all sorts of languages.

The table d’ho^te was served by waitresses dressed in the quaint and comely costume of the Swiss peasants.  This consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris, cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched to the mise en sce`ne in the form of a jeu d’esprit.  It gives to the wearer a singularly piquant and alluring aspect.