The Greenville journal. [volume] (Greenville, Ohio) 1850-1918, 1914-07-23

In the lower valleys, spring holds the
heights for long time yet. In sense 1t never
leaves them. Even in August traces of 1t linger
sweetly against the edges of the snow-1elds, and
along the eversparkling pastures where the tree
line stops. When nature has grown SNUG and
lazy among the dust and heat below one has only
to climb thousand feet or two to recapture all
the lost brilance of May and early June The
grass never seems to lose its vivid freshness, It's
emerald cooring; the larches still clap their lit
tie hands, so brightly gloved; the pines seem to
have shaken off their only the day before.
And water runs everywhere, pouring in countless
r1vuets to feed the bigger torrents down below.
Spring never leaves the higher Alpine valleys
Her cave is somewhere just above the tree-line
She sings and dances there eternally.
1t is the habit more and more to sneer little
at Switzerland She is 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"
1t. In this there lies certain truth. Switzerland
is playground and need not pretend to be any,
thing else. There Is little enough "atmosphere"
for artistic effects and the cooring 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 unimaginatve: though
provided they keep good hotels at reasonable
prices, there is not much fault to be found with
them on that The fortunate can always
go further afield to Dalmata, 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.
tons govern the selection of travel routes and for
these Switzerland must hold first place for manv
generations to come.
And there are few places where conditions are
sweet and clean and wholesome, as refresh
Ing. stimulating and pure high Alpine valley,
with its cozy cheap hotels, in the early summer
months. Their contribution to the health of En-
rope is no negligible quantity, even if they con.
tribute to the deathroll, too. Compared to MANY a
seaside resort, with its demoralizng influences Of
gambling, over-dressng, artificial gaieties to saw
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
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 ugliness and cheapness also in the
forests mountains, flowers, and in the very at
mosphere Scenery is scenery but the interpre.
tation is of the mind. In the last generation the
world has grown immeasuraby more vulgar. Our
fathers happy in Switzerland; children
vote it dull, perhaps played out
Changes have certainly over it these last
twenty years. The little inns, where pensions