It is said that many children who live in the central provinces, away from the ocean, have a great longing to see it.

I who had never been away from the monotonous country surrounding us looked forward eagerly to seeing the mountains.
I tried to imagine them; I had seen pictures of several, and I had even painted them for the "Donkey's Skin." My sister, when she visited Lake Lucerne, sent me a description of the mountains, and wrote me long letters about them, such as are seldom addressed to a child of my age.
And my ideas were further extended by some photographs of glaciers that my sister brought me for my magic-lantern.

I desired with all my heart to see the mountains themselves.
One day, as if in answer to my wish, there came a letter that created quite a stir in our house.

It was from a first cousin of my father, who had at one time regarded my father with a brotherly love, but for thirty years, for some reason unknown to me, this cousin had not written or given any sign of life.
At the time of my birth, all talk of him had ceased in our family, and I was ignorant of his existence.

And now he wrote and begged that the old bond might be renewed; he was living, he said, in a little southern village in the heart of the Swiss Mountains.