The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1914-07-25

In the lower valleys, spring holds the
heights for a long time yet. In a sense It never
leaves them, Even in August traces of it linger
sweetly against the edges Of the snow-felds, and
along the ever-sparkling pastures where the tree
line stops. When nature has grown Snug and
lazy among the dust and heat below, one has only
to climb a thousand feet or two to recapture all
the lost briTiance of May and early June. The
grass never seems to lose Its vivid freshness, its
emerald coloring; the larches still clap their lit
tie hands, SO brightly gloved; the pines seem to
have shaken off their snow only the day before.
And water runs everywhere, pouring in countless
rivulets to feed the bigger torrents down below.
Spring never leaves the higher Alpine valleys.
Her cave is somewhere Just above the treeline.
She sings and dances there eternally.
1t is the habit more and more to sheer a little
at Switzerland. She is a pretty, bourgeois state,
the people unpicturesque and rather sordid, a
mere nation of hotelkeepers who exist to pick the
tourists pockets. She is played out, vulgarized,
hopelessly commonplace. Switzerland has no at
mosphere, no shading, no coloring but that of
the chromograph order. The tourist agents run"
it. In this there lies a certain truth. Switzerland
is a playground, and need not pretend to be any
thing else. There is little enough atmosphere"
for artistic effects, and the coloring is monotonous
repetition of brilliant green meadows, blue forests,
with white and black peaks that cut into azure
skies without soft shading as in Scotland, Ireland
and moister climates. And the people are bour-
geois, unpicturesque and unimaginative; though,
provided they keep good hotels at reasonable
prices, there is not much fault to be found with
them on that score. The fortunate can always
go further afeld to Dalmatia, Bosnia, the Caucasus
If they will. The big world offers endless variety
still to those who have the time and purse to
measure it; but for the majority stricter condi.
lions govern the selection of travel routes, and for
these Switzerland must hold first place for many
generations to come.
And there are few places where conditions are
as sweet and clean and wholesome, as refresh
ing, stimulating and pure as a high Alpine valley,
with its coy, cheap hotels, in the early summer
months. Their contribution to the health of Eu-
rope is no negligible quantity, even If they con-
tribute to the %deathron, too. Compared to many a
seaside resort, with its demoralizing influences of
gambling, over-dressing, artificial g%aieties, to say
nothing of other undesirable elements such places
favor and attract, these high Alpine valleys are In
every way superior. But 1t must be added that
one finds in places usually what one brings to
them. A holiday becomes the reflection of the
mind that seeks it, and ugliness and cheapness in
the heart find uglness and c~heapness also in the
forests, mountains, flowers, and in the very at
m%osphere. Scenery is scenery, but the interpre-
tation is of the mind. In the last generation the
world has grown immeasurably more vulgar. Our
fathers were happy in Switzerland; our children
vote it dull, perhaps played out.
Changes have certainly come over it these last
twenty years. The little inns, where pensions