Remembered Days (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1902. Excerpt: ... XI THE BETROTHED ONES OF GRINDERWALD When all your passions are extinguished, quoth Christian, when you have been disillusioned of glory and fortune, then in your heart has birth an ardor strange, mysterious, and of infinite delight--the love of fishing with a line. Ah, my dear friends, you do not know the pleasure of watching the float on the river, of directing it with skill toward the margin of the whirling foam, or under the great willows, between the moss-grown rocks, where lurk the trout and salmon. You cannot imagine the angler's emotion when he sees the float glide under the azure wave, when he feels the fish struggling at the hook, and when with a vigorous stroke of the wrist he launches it through the air upon the grass, where it leaps and gleams in the sun. No, you cannot fancy such a joy. The most adroit fisher with the line whom I know is Monsieur Zacharias Seiler, exjudge of the tribunal of Stantz, a Swiss, and several times a member of the grand council of Lucerne. After dozing between twenty-five and thirty years amid the clamors of lawyers Ludwig Kilian, Hemmerdinger, and other jurists of the place, the good man at length prayed for grace that he might enjoy his pension in Kusnacht Street, near the German gate, under the care of Mademoiselle Therese, an old and very devout governess with a wry nose and a chin slightly bearded with gray. These two placid creatures were abundant in mutual indulgence, each respecting the other's eccentricities. Mademoiselle Therese attended to his clothing, ironed his linen, cared for his supply of tobacco, which she inclosed in a large earthen crock, moistening it from time to time; after which she was free to think of her birds, to read her breviary, and to go to mass. Judge Zacharias was approaching sixty; he wore a peruke, and owne...