The Spell of Switzerland

by Nathan Haskell Dole

Overview

This book an EXACT reproduction of the original book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781023207997
Publisher:	Anson Street Press
Publication date:	03/28/2025
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.69(d)

Read an Excerpt

automobile; mountains to climb; the Dolomites to visit. Each time new drawings, new seductions. With each week's mail I felt the insidious, impalpable lure. I have many friends who put faith in astrology. One of my acquaintances is making a large income from constructing horoscopes. She is sincere; she has a real faith. She acts on the hypothesis that from even the most distant of the planets radiate baleful or beneficent influences which move those mortals who are, as it were, keyed or tuned to them. Saturn, whose density is less than alcohol, a billion miles away; Neptune, almost three billion miles away, infinitesimal specks in the ocean of space, make men and women happy or miserable. How much more then is it possible that the heaped-up masses of mighty mountains may work their spell on men half-way around this globe of ours? I began to be conscious of the Spell of Switzerland. A half-crazy friend of mine, a painter, who loved mountains and depicted them on his canvases, once broached a theory of his, as we stood on top of Mount Adams: " The time will come," he said with the conviction of a prophet, " when we shall be able to take advantage of the electric current flowingfrom this mountain-mass to Mount Washington, yonder, and commit ourselves safely and boldly to its control. Then we shall be able to practise levitation. It will be perfectly easy, perfectly feasible to leap from one peak to another." I am sure I felt stirring within me the impulse to leap into the air with the certainty that I should land on top of the Jungf ran or of Mont Blanc. It was a cumulative attraction. Every day it grew more intense. I got from the library every book I could find aboutSwitzerland. I soaked myself in Swiss history. I began to know Switzerland as familiarly as if I had a...