We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span the green and brilliant Reuss just below where it goes plunging and hurrahing out of the lake.  These rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water.  They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old Swiss masters—­old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence of art.

The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water is very clear.  The parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages.  One day I thought I would stop and see a fish caught.  The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which I had not thought of before for twelve years.  This one: 

THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY’S

When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in Washington, in the winter of ’67, we were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction.  “This is lucky!  You are Mr. Riley, ain’t you?”

Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic.  He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said: 

“I am Mr. Riley.  Did you happen to be looking for me?”

“That’s just what I was doing,” said the man, joyously, “and it’s the biggest luck in the world that I’ve found you.  My name is Lykins.  I’m one of the teachers of the high school—­San Francisco.  As soon as I heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it—­and here I am.”

“Yes,” said Riley, slowly, “as you have remarked ...  Mr. Lykins ... here you are.  And have you got it?”

“Well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it.  I’ve brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people.  Now I want you, if you’ll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home.”

“If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation tonight,” said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it—­to an unaccustomed ear.

“Oh, tonight, by all means!  I haven’t got any time to fool around.  I want their promise before I go to bed —­I ain’t the talking kind, I’m the doing kind!”

“Yes ... you’ve come to the right place for that.  When did you arrive?”

“Just an hour ago.”

“When are you intending to leave?”

“For New York tomorrow evening—­for San Francisco next morning.”

“Just so....  What are you going to do tomorrow?”

“Do!  Why, I’ve got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven’t I?”