Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/295

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"AN AMERICAN TOLD ME SO."
281

"No,—my husband is with us."

"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around alone,—don't you think so?"

"I suppose it must be."

"Hi, there's Mount Pilatus coming in sight again. Named after Pontius Pilate, you know, that shot the apple off of William Toll's head. Guide-book tells all about it, they say. I didn't read it—an American told me. I don't read when I'm knocking around like this, having a good time. Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used to preach?"

THE CONSTANT SEARCHER.

"I did not know he ever preached there."

"O, yes he did. That American told me so. He don't ever shut up his guide-book. He knows more about this lake than the fishes in it Besides, they call it 'Tell's Chapel'—you know that yourself. You ever been over here before?"

"Yes."

"I haven't. It's my first trip. But we've been all around,—Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year.—Studying German all the time now. Can't enter till I know German. This book's Otto's Grammar. It's a mighty good book to get the ich habe gehabt haben's out of. But I don't really study when I'm knocking around this way. If the notion takes me, I just run over my little old ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er hat gehabt, wir haben gehabt, ihr habet gehabt, sie haben gehabt,—kind of 'Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know, and after that, maybe I don't buckle to it again for three days. It's awful