Holiday Rambles in Ordinary Places Author:Richard Holt Hutton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: To Ammergau. Berne, August 4, 1870. QIR,—While the war gives to all English journals, and to yours even more than to most others, a monotone of somewhat gr... more »im earnestness and intensity, it may be a relief to you and some of your readers, if you allow me to give you a slight account of a holiday in the Bavarian and Austrian Tyrol and Switzerland, the latter part of which has been troubled by wars and rumours of wars and a certain amount of anxiety as to our own communications with home. To tell the truth, like a good many other English, we are lingering at Berne in a somewhat feverish state of mind. My husband consults all sorts of strangers, in languages of which he is and is not master, as to the prospect of difficulties on the route home, and they all answer with an air of studied resolve against timidity, —referring him to authorities like Swiss landlords and English agents for tourist tickets, who are hardly without bias on such a matter—that to me, at least, is not encouraging. I have no mission which demands for me that rather profane " baptism of fire " of which I observe Louis, the heir apparent, has had a somewhat homoeopathic dose. Englishmen arriving from Paris to-day assure me that they met at D61e on their way towards the Swiss border at Pontarlier a large body of the Emperor's Algerine troops, looking very dark and fierce and diabolic indeed. I have no fancy for meeting them, or, perhaps, returning with another body of them who have tasted blood, and may be sent back by the Emperor to keep Paris quiet, if he finds Prussia too strong for him. So, on the whole, I tell Edward, who is, I am happy to say, a good deal guided by my advice, " My dear, we are safe and comfortable at Berne, in the capital of a neutral State which loves foreigners,—and in a German portion ...« less