The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1880-08-05
How Mark Twain Witnessed an Alpine
Sunrise.

How Mark Twain Witnessed an Alpine
Sunrise.
We were at the. Rigi- Kuhn Hotel on
the Alps. It was night. We wanted
to see the sun rise in the morning. We
curled up, in the clammy beds, and
went to sleep without rocking. We
were 80 sodden with fatigue that we
never stirred nor turned over till the
booming blast of the Alpine horn
aroused us. It may well be imagined
that we did not lose any time. We
snatched on q few odds and ends Of
clothing, cocooned ourselves in the
proper red blankets, and plunged along
the halls and out into the whistling
winds bare-headed. We saw a tall,
wooden scaffolding on the very peak
Of the summit, a hundred yards away,
and made for it. We rushed up the
stairs to the top of this scaffolding,
and stood there, above the vast outly-
ing world, with hair flying and ruddy
blankets waving and cracking in the
fierce breeze.
Fifteen minutes too late, at lastr'
said Harris. in a vexed voice. "The
sun is clear above the horizon"
"No NATTER" 1 said, cit is a most
magnificent spectacle, and we will see
it do the rest of it's rising. anyway"
In a moment we were deeply alb
sorbed in the marvel before us, and
dead to everything else. The great
cloud-barred disk Of the sun stood Just
above limitless expanse of tossing
white caps--so to speak, billowy
chaos of massey mountain domes, and
peaks draped in imperishable snow,
and flooded with an opaline glory of
changing and dissolving splendors,
while through riffs in black cloud
bank above the sun, radiating lances of
diamond dust shot to the zenith. The
cloven valleys of the lower world
swan in tinted mist, which yelled
the ruggedness of their crags and ribs
and ragged forests, and turned all the
forbidding region into soft and rich
and sensuous paradise.
We could not speak. We could hard
ly breathe. We could only gaze in
drunken ecstasy and drink it in. Pres
emily Harris exclaimed: "Why, man,
it's going down"'
Perfectly true. We had missed the
morning orn-blow, and slept all day.
This was supplying. Harris said:
''LOok here, the sun isn't the specta-
cle-it's us-stacked up here on top of
this gallows, in these idiotic blankets,
and two hundred and fifty well dressed
men and women down there gawking
up at us and not caring a straw whether
the sun rises or sets, as long as they've
got such ridiculous spectacle as this
to set down in their memorandum
books. They seem to be laughing their
ribs loose, and there's one girl there
that appears to be going all to pieces.
never saw such man as you before. |
think you are the very last possibility
in the way of an ass"
"What have I done?' answered,
with heat.
"What have you done? You've got
up at half-past seven o'clock in the
evening to see the sun rise, that's what
you've DONE"
The next morning, however, we were
up before daylight. Fully clothed and
wrapped in blankets we huddled our
selves up by the window with lighted
pipes and fell into q chat, while we
waited in exceeding comfort to see how
an Alpine sunrise was going to look by
candle light. By and by a delicate,
spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself
by imperceptible degrees over the lofti-
est attitudes of the snowy wastes but
there the effect seemed to stop. I said,
presently:
There is hitch about this sunrise
somewhere. It doesn't seem to 90.
What do you reckon is the matter with
it?"
II don't know. 1t appears to hang
fire somewhere. never saw sunrise
act like that before. Can it be that the
hotel is playing anything on us?"
"Of course not. The hotel merely
has a property interest in the sun, it
has nothing to do with the management
OF it. 1t is a precarious kind of property.
too; succession of total eclipses would
probably ruin this tavern. Now, what
can be the matter with this sunrise?"
Harris jumped up and said: "rve
got it! l know what's the matter with
it! We've been looking at the place
where the sun set last night"
cit is perfectly true! Why couldn't
you have thought of that sooner? Now
we've lost another one! And all through
your laundering. 1t was exactly like
you to light pipe and sit down to wait
for the sun to rise in the west"
lit was exactly like me to find out
the mistake, too. You never would
have found it out. 1 find out all the
Mistakes
"You make them all, too, else your
most valued faculty would be wasted
on you. But don't stop to quarrel now,
maybe we are not too late yet"
But we were. The sun was well up
when we got to the exhibition ground.
THE T1-Hnan AbrO0d