The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales.
LITTLE RUDY. Let us visit Switzerland and look around us in the glorious country of mountains, where the forest rises out of steep rocky walls; let us ascend to the dazzling snow-fields, and thence descend to the green plains, where the rivulets and brooks hasten away, foaming up, as if they feared not to vanish, as they reached the sea. The sun beams upon the deep valley, it burns also upon the heavy masses of snow; so that after the lapse of years, they melt into shining ice-blocks, and become rolling avalanches and heaped-up glaciers. Two of these lie in the broad clefts of the rock, under the Schreckhorn and Wetterhorn, near the little town of Grindelwald. They are so remarkable that many strangers come to gaze at them, in the summer time, from all parts of the world; they come over the high snow-covered mountains, they come from the deepest valleys, and they are obliged to ascend during many hours, and as they ascend, the valley sinks deeper and deeper, as though seen from an air-balloon.
beyond--something green and fresh and brilliant, like new land after a
long sea journey. Then we were out of view of it again, for a time;
until we came to a point where it seemed good to climb and peep over the
low parapet.
It was a peep into paradise. Before us lay a green country. There was a
rich verdure on the opposite hills. Beyond them ran a valley filled with
the warm haze of summer, out of which the round tree-tops stood dark
against the still higher hills beyond. The wheat was ripe upon the far
hill slopes. The sun bathed the lap of the land with his midday summer
warmth. Along the crest of the distant hills ran the line of tall,
regular trees which in this country invariably means a road. A church
spire rose from a tree clump on a nearer crest. Some of the foreground
was pitted with the ugly red splashes which have become for us, in this
horrible area, the normal feature of the countryside. But, beyond it,
was the green country spread out like a picture, sleeping under the heat
of a summer's sun.
It was the promised land--the country behind the German lines--the
valley about Bapaume where the Germans have been for two years
undisturbed in French territory, until our troops for the first time
peeped over the ridge the other day at the flashes of the very German
guns which were firing at them.
Quite close at hand was a wood. The trees were not more than half a mile
away, if that. It was a growing wood--with the green still on the
LITTLE RUDY. Let us visit Switzerland and look around us in the glorious country of mountains, where the forest rises out of steep rocky walls; let us ascend to the dazzling snow-fields, and thence descend to the green plains, where the rivulets and brooks hasten away, foaming up, as if they feared not to vanish, as they reached the sea. The sun beams upon the deep valley, it burns also upon the heavy masses of snow; so that after the lapse of years, they melt into shining ice-blocks, and become rolling avalanches and heaped-up glaciers. Two of these lie in the broad clefts of the rock, under the Schreckhorn and Wetterhorn, near the little town of Grindelwald. They are so remarkable that many strangers come to gaze at them, in the summer time, from all parts of the world; they come over the high snow-covered mountains, they come from the deepest valleys, and they are obliged to ascend during many hours, and as they ascend, the valley sinks deeper and deeper, as though seen from an air-balloon.