At custom-houses the multitude file tediously through, hot and irritated, and look on while the officers burrow into the trunks and make a mess of everything; but you hand your keys to the courier and sit still.  Perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rain-storm at ten at night—­you generally do.  The multitude spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting it transferred to the omnibuses; but the courier puts you into a vehicle without a moment’s loss of time, and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready, you can go at once to bed.  Some of those other people will have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain, before they find accommodations.

I have not set down half of the virtues that are vested in a good courier, but I think I have set down a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man who can afford one and does not employ him is not a wise economist.  My courier was the worst one in Europe, yet he was a good deal better than none at all.  It could not pay him to be a better one than he was, because I could not afford to buy things through him.  He was a good enough courier for the small amount he got out of his service.  Yes, to travel with a courier is bliss, to travel without one is the reverse.

I have had dealings with some very bad couriers; but I have also had dealings with one who might fairly be called perfection.  He was a young Polander, named Joseph N. Verey.  He spoke eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home in all of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual; he was fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in the matter of overcoming difficulties; he not only knew how to do everything in his line, but he knew the best ways and the quickest; he was handy with children and invalids; all his employer needed to do was to take life easy and leave everything to the courier.  His address is, care of Messrs. Gay & Son, Strand, London; he was formerly a conductor of Gay’s tourist parties.  Excellent couriers are somewhat rare; if the reader is about to travel, he will find it to his advantage to make a note of this one.

CHAPTER XXXIII [We Climb Far—­by Buggy]

The beautiful Giesbach Fall is near Interlaken, on the other side of the lake of Brienz, and is illuminated every night with those gorgeous theatrical fires whose name I cannot call just at this moment.  This was said to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means to miss.  I was strongly tempted, but I could not go there with propriety, because one goes in a boat.  The task which I had set myself was to walk over Europe on foot, not skim over it in a boat.  I had made a tacit contract with myself; it was my duty to abide by it.  I was willing to make boat trips for pleasure, but I could not conscientiously make them in the way of business.