Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

and France. When we were jointly admiring some architectural marvel or sentimentalizing at some historic site,
Johnson would suddenly pull his tall silk hat more firmly
upon his brow and dart away to enter the shop of a neighboring chemist or apotheker or pharmacien and talk for
an hour about dry mustard plasters and elastic bandages
for the wounded. I came to love him much, and to hate
his hat. He insisted on wearing it on all occasions, formal
or informal; alike by Shakespeare's tomb at Stratford-onAvon, on the battle-field at Waterloo, in the presence of
the Eleven Thousand Virgins at Cologne, on a pedestrian
tour along the Rhine, on the topmost wall of Heidelberg
Castle, at the Righi summit when the sun was rising.
Finally at Lucerne, in front of the Lion, I dared my
friend into the pledge that when we reached the Devil's
Bridge on our walk through the upper reaches of the St.
Gotthard Pass we would sacrifice to Satan by simultaneously hurling our head-coverings, his beaver and my
chapeau melon, into the abyss below. He consented reluctantly. We prepared for the ceremony by buying and
pocketing each a cheap glossy black cambric cap of the
peasant type. When the Devil's Bridge was beneath our
soles some days later, his hesitation was painfully apparent. There was once a famous battle at that desolate,
diabolical spot, but I doubt if the conflict was fiercer than
that between Johnson's pride of possession and sense of
honor. Not till I had shamed him by redeeming first my
share of the vow did the cherished and detested stovepipe descend to the divvle, to be caught by the foaming
Reuss torrent and whirled to the Rhine and out into the
North Sea unless intercepted.
We wore our cambric caps faithfully quite to Paris; they

attracted considerable attention and some unfavorable
comment from tourists and concierges, particularly at
the fashionable hostelries of Vevey and Geneva. Our
Swiss walk took us by the Gotthard to and over the Furka,