1.  “Pretty much” may not be elegant English, but it is
    high time it was.  There is no elegant word or phrase
    which means just what it means.—­M.T.

Leaving the Expedition outside to rest, I quartered myself in the chalet, with Harris, proposing to correct my journals and scientific observations before continuing the ascent.  I had hardly begun my work when a tall, slender, vigorous American youth of about twenty-three, who was on his way down the mountain, entered and came toward me with that breeze self-complacency which is the adolescent’s idea of the well-bred ease of the man of the world.  His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.  He introduced himself, smiling a smirky smile borrowed from the courtiers of the stage, extended a fair-skinned talon, and while he gripped my hand in it he bent his body forward three times at the hips, as the stage courtier does, and said in the airiest and most condescending and patronizing way—­I quite remember his exact language: 

“Very glad to make your acquaintance, ’m sure; very glad indeed, assure you.  I’ve read all your little efforts and greatly admired them, and when I heard you were here, I ...”

I indicated a chair, and he sat down.  This grandee was the grandson of an American of considerable note in his day, and not wholly forgotten yet—­a man who came so near being a great man that he was quite generally accounted one while he lived.

I slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific problems, and heard this conversation: 

Grandson.  First visit to Europe?

Harris.  Mine?  Yes.

G.S. (With a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive of bygone joys that may be tasted in their freshness but once.) Ah, I know what it is to you.  A first visit!—­ah, the romance of it!  I wish I could feel it again.

H. Yes, I find it exceeds all my dreams.  It is enchantment. 
I go...

G.S. (With a dainty gesture of the hand signifying “Spare me your callow enthusiasms, good friend.”) Yes, I know, I know; you go to cathedrals, and exclaim; and you drag through league-long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you stand here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground, and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated with your first crude conceptions of Art, and are proud and happy.  Ah, yes, proud and happy—­that expresses it.  Yes-yes, enjoy it—­it is right—­it is an innocent revel.

H. And you?  Don’t you do these things now?

G.S.  I!  Oh, that is very good!  My dear sir, when you are as old a traveler as I am, you will not ask such a question as that. I visit the regulation gallery, moon around the regulation cathedral, do the worn round of the regulation sights, yet?—­Excuse me!