Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1875 — Alpine Excursions. [ARTICLE]

Alpine Excursions.

Anne Brewster- says in a letter to the Philadelphia Bulletin: “ There are’ijia: ly persons who are unhappily ignorant Vof the delights and varieties, of Alpine Excursions ; they imagine them to be fill alike and all equally tiresome. They dall our raptures nonsense and our recitals/ of what we have actually seen and felt flights of imagination. We can only pity them. They are as the cleat and blind, and are unbelieving because, of their incapabilities. Alpine courses are very fatiguing; you return, with every atom of your body tingling, bruised feet, probably severe contusions; your face blistered and' skinned, caused by the reflection of the sun on the ice; every drop of blood in your veins is dancing and bubbling. You go to bed tired from the crown of your head to the sole of your feet, and wonder if it could be possible for you to lalL to pieces, so thoroughly shaken up and unhinged is your mortal frame. But something inside of you feels splendidly., Alpine courses may weary the body, but they delight and fortify mind, imagination and spirit. I never shall forget the physical pain and keen spiritual enjoy" ment I felt once when the guides allowed me to throw myself down on the turf of a Buperbfirand pine forest near the Nan, Berrant during a rapid, steep and wearying descent we were making on foot one August afternoon. The grass was thick with flowers: lilac digitals, golden arnica, rosa saxifrage, Alpine veronica genipet even little chrysanthemums, the dark garnet vanilla and Alpine roses. I gathered great handfuls and flung them up into the air. Life never had for me a happier, purer moment. There was a sense of exaltation, an exulting emotion that nothing else gives. There was no sorrow worth thinking of, no wrong worth remembering, no care but was folly. It is this ex, alted feeling that is the secret Cause of the fascination of Alpine traveling. If you experience it once it is irresistible. No juice that the grape ever yielded possesses the exhilarating power that is in the air you breathe on a solitary glacier, or the summit of a high Alp. The air far surpasses wine of Cyprus or Xeres. It gives a godlike inebriation, and its to-morrow is one of health and lightness of heart.” A man who travels around a newlycarpeted bedroom barefoot will be apt to find himself cn the wrong rack. -