In September, 1913, I found myself on the Paris-Milan Express on my way to Venice to meet Edith Dale. I have travelled across Switzerland many times and I hope to do so again (the view from the car-windows is magnificent), but I shall never visit that country. God keep me from lingering in the mountains or by the shores of the sea. Such immensities of nature strangle talent and even dwarf genius. No great creative work has ever been composed by the sea or in the shadow of a mountain. In the presence of the perpetual mysteries of nature, man feels his smallness. There are those who may say that the sky-scrapers of the city evoke a similar feeling, but man's relation to these is not the same; he knows that man built these monster structures and that man will tear them down again. Mountains and the sea are eternal. Does this explain why so much that passes for art in America comes from Indiana and Illinois, the flat, unimposing, monotonous Middle West?
All journeys, I suppose, have their memorable incidents and episodes, however unimportant. My sole memory of this particular hegira is trifling. While I was dining, the train gave a lurch or a swerve, hurling me with my plate in my lap to the farthest corner of the car. The soup which the
