River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1911-11-30

makes stay over night at the top pracIlcally
necessary. With old-fashioned courtesy the
tourists are conducted to their rooms by an
able, and after meals are shown round the
church. the kennels and museum, quite as
guests in country house. Never hint OF
pay Every tourist knows-it Is universal con-
versation and all guide books tell it-that each
tourist ought to put into the aims box at least
what he Tor she) would have to pay at a hotel.
All tourists similarly know in advance that
the Hospice has grown poor in modern times
by continuing to feed, warm and lodge $4,000
mingled rich and poor annually-the grants
rents and annuities that once made It rich
having shrunk and dwindled. This being 80.
what do you imagine the 5000 gay and AFRO
CANT tourists last summer put into the aims
box? Less than 1000 would have paid at a
hotel! That Is to say, an average of one tour
ist in six paid UP honestly. The rest sneaked
1t.
This is not why the dogs have a far-away,
almost disdainfu look. They do not know why
they are almost hard UP for their soup and
biscuits. Once they wore gold collars; now
they go about contentedly in leather dotted
with brass nail-heads. They do not even know
that rich tourists have tried to buy them for
large sums-which the good canons gently re-
fused; they would never send their dog friends
down to pant and pine IN the thick, hot air or
the plain. They disdain nobody. They simply
do not like our smell-the smell of overheated
overfed gross tourist bodies. burning oxygen
and letting off poisonous gases like furnace.
Their friends, the abbes. brothers and clean
smelling wood choppers of the heights are
plain livers trained down, all muscle their
very clothes free from the grease and microbes
of the fostering plain. How. then, If they
avoid us. are they willing to bound off through
snow and night and hunt out-what they
smell so easily, so far away-the strong
scented denizen of low attitudes in distress?
In men it would be called professional ardor.
In these dogs we call it atavism. Since ST.
Bernard de Mention collected the pack in the
year A. D. 962, almost thousand years havs
elapsed. Generation after generation, bacs
through the centuries, the same patient train
ing, exclusive companionship of wise men, alb.
sence of outside foolishness and distractions.
have made 1t race Of dogs apart. There are
plenty of st. Demands up and down the valley;
but they are degenerates from the overflow
The dogs of the Hospice, for example, take
their orders only from the abbes, or canons
not the brown brothers ("marronniers') who
live with them feed them and for whom they
have the greatest affection Yet before start,
ing on an expedition, able has the chief
dogs up before him, one by one. 1t passes in
absolute silence, very queer When the pure.
minded, strong-souled, trained-down unworldl
man looks into his eyes, what passes into tn
subconscious being of the clean-living. high
bred man-companioned animal of the thiEE
air and lonely heights?
Two Hospice dogs have crouched beside an
exhausted wayfarer smuggling close to him
on each side to keep him warm while the third
dog ran back to lead the caravan" of rescue
to the spot.
Such trio of scouts have parked contin.
uously in the ears of weakening, stumbling
traveller to keep him awake. Two trudged
so close to him on each side as to warm and
hold him upright-while the third butted him
along from behind a good five minutes before
dashing back to bring the caravan.
Any visitor in snow time is given the
privilege 20 wander off and hide behind drift
las far as he pleases, covering his tracks
at pleasure. Then able will take a new
bunch of six dogs from the kennels, merely
show them your handkerchief in his uplifted
hand-of course they get the scent-and Oh
they go, circling, barking as at game After
two CIRCLES Of the Hospice, at the most, run.
ming with their noses in the air like French
deer hound, they have your trail and follow
it straight to where you are waiting to De
rescued. Then you get your second surprise,
Instead of digging you out and offering you
a drink of brandy and water from the canteens
round their necks, they stand in circle, laugh
ing at you You know how a dog laughs?
Technically, the pass is open to circula.
ton" between the melting and temperance OF
the SHOWS in July, August and September,
During this period, when the road is alive with
traffic over good dry earth, and rock, the
rescue work is limited to hunting up adventur
Gus tourists or tipsy "work-seeking" laborera
who have strayed or fallen. In bad weather
and as soon as there is snow, the telephone
makes rescue work routine From st. Rhemy
on the Swiss slope, telephone message in
rio h1v fho Of he QOa
up of each vehicle, band of pedestrians soil
tary adventurer