hours of snow and rock.

I will go no further, not because I have no more to say, but because
descriptions of scenery soon become wearisome, and because I have, I
hope, said enough to show that the mountaineer may boast of some
intellectual pleasures; that he is not a mere scrambler, but that he
looks for poetical impressions, as well as for such small glory as his
achievements may gain in a very small circle. Something of what he gains
fortunately sticks by him: he does not quite forget the mountain
language; his eye still recognises the space and the height and the
glory of the lofty mountains. And yet there is some pain in wandering
ghostlike among the scenes of his earlier pleasures. For my part, I try
in vain to hug myself in a sense of comfort. I turn over in bed when I
hear the stamping of heavily nailed shoes along the passage of an inn
about 2 A.M. I feel the skin of my nose complacently when I see others
returning with a glistening tight aspect about that unluckily prominent
feature, and know that in a day or two it will be raw and blistered and
burning. I think, in a comfortable inn at night, of the miseries of
those who are trying to sleep in damp hay, or on hard boards of châlets,
at once cold and stuffy and haunted by innumerable fleas. I congratulate
myself on having a whole skin and unfractured bones, and on the small
danger of ever breaking them over an Alpine precipice. But yet I
secretly know that these consolations are feeble. It is little use to
avoid early rising and discomfort, and even fleas, if one also loses the
pleasures to which they were the sauce--rather too _piquante_ a sauce
occasionally, it must be admitted. The philosophy is all very well which
recommends moderate enjoyment, regular exercise, and a careful avoidance
of risk and over-excitement. That is, it is all very well so long as
risk and excitement and immoderate enjoyment are out of your power; but
it does not stand the test of looking on and seeing them just beyond