Spain, or you may find me off for Venice, or flitting toward Dresden.  I shall probably go to Egypt presently; friends will say to friends, “He is at the Nile cataracts”—­and at that very moment they will be surprised to learn that I’m away off yonder in India somewhere.  I am a constant surprise to people.  They are always saying, “Yes, he was in Jerusalem when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he is now.”

Presently the Grandson rose to leave—­discovered he had an appointment with some Emperor, perhaps.  He did his graces over again:  gripped me with one talon, at arm’s-length, pressed his hat against his stomach with the other, bent his body in the middle three times, murmuring: 

“Pleasure, ’m sure; great pleasure, ’m sure.  Wish you much success.”

Then he removed his gracious presence.  It is a great and solemn thing to have a grandfather.

I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way, for what little indignation he excited in me soon passed and left nothing behind it but compassion.  One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum.  I have tried to repeat this lad’s very words; if I have failed anywhere I have at least not failed to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said.  He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of Young America I came across during my foreign tramping.  I have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures.  The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five or six times as an “old traveler,” and as many as three times (with a serene complacency which was maddening) as a “man of the world.”  There was something very delicious about his leaving Boston to her “narrowness,” unreproved and uninstructed.

I formed the caravan in marching order, presently, and after riding down the line to see that it was properly roped together, gave the command to proceed.  In a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land.  We were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an uninterrupted view, straight before us, of our summit —­the summit of the Riffelberg.

We followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right, now to the left, but always up, and always crowded and incommoded by going and coming files of reckless tourists who were never, in a single instance, tied together.  I was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution, for in many places the road was not two yards wide, and often the lower side of it sloped away in slanting precipices eight and even nine feet deep.  I had to encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving way to their unmanly fears.

We might have made the summit before night, but for a delay caused by the loss of an umbrella.  I was allowing the umbrella to remain lost, but the men murmured, and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood in peculiar need of protection against avalanches; so I went into camp and detached a strong party to go after the missing article.