Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain [pseud.] [with an appreciation by Brander Matthews and an introduction by Albert Bigelow Paine]

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE
saint. That reminds me that you see very few
priests around here, and yet, as I have already said,
this whole big enterprise is owned and managed by
a convent. The few priests one does see here are
dressed like human beings, and so there may be
more of them than I imagine. Fifteen priests dressed
like these could not attract as much of your attention as would one priest at Aix-les-Bains. You cannot pull your eye loose from the French priest as
long as he is in sight, his dress is so fascinatingly
ugly. I seem to be wandering from the subject,
but I am not. This is about the coldest place I ever
saw, and the wettest, too. This August seems like
an English November to me. Rain? Why, it seems
to like to rain here. It seems to rain every time
there is a chance. You are strictly required to be
out airing and exercising whenever the sun is shining,
so I hate to see the sun shining because I hate air
and exercise-duty air and duty exercise taken for
medicine. It seems ungenuine, out of season,
degraded to sordid utilities, a subtle spiritual something gone from it which one can't describe in
words, but-don't you understand? With that gone
what is left but canned air, canned exercise, and
you don't want it.
When the sun does shine for a few moments or
a few hours these people swarm out and flock through
the streets and over the hills and through the pine
woods, and make the most of the chance, and I have
flocked out, too, on some of these occasions, but as
a rule I stay in and try to get warm.
And what is there for means, besides heavy cloth120