Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1914-07-24


heights for long time yet. In 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 thousand feet or two to recapture all
the lost brilliance 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 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 sneer little
st Switzerland She is pretty, bourgeois state
the people unpicturesque and rather sordid,
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, coloring but that of
the chromograph order The tourist agents run"
1t. In this there lies 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 in Scotland, Ireland
and moister climates. And the people are bour-
geos, unpicturesque and unimaginatve; though,
provided they keep good hotels at reasonable
prices, there Is not much fault to be found with
them that The fortunate can always
go further afeld to Damatia, 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 many
generations to come.
And there few places where conditions are
as sweet and clean and wholesome, as refresh
ing. stimulating and pure 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, II they con-
tribute to the deathroll, too. Compared to many
seaside resort, with it's demoralizing influences of
gambling over-dressing, artificial gaeties, 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 brings to
them. holiday becomes the reflection of the
mind that seeks 1t, and ugliness and cheapness In
the heart find uginess and cheapness also in the
forests, mountains. flowers, and in the very at
mosphere. Scenery is scenery, but the interpre-
ttation is OF the mind. In the last generation the
world has grown UNNECESSARILY more vulgar Our
fathers 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