
Luke Batterham
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'SHE WAS TO ME SUPERHUMANLY BEAUTIFUL': MARK TWAIN ON AN ENCOUNTER IN A TRAMP ABROAD. In A Tramp Abroad, the account of his European walking tour of 1878, Twain had described how he had come across, at the Hôtel du Soleil near Zermatt, a landlord's daughter he thinks 'the prettiest young creature I saw in all that region', adding: 'I remember that the only native match to her I saw in all Europe was the young daughter of the landlord of a village inn in the Black Forest' capping the anecdote by asking: 'Why don't more people in Europe marry and keep hotel?' (p.438). Earlier in the book he describes how 'We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, in a very pretty village' (p. 186). This letter was published in 2007; see the Mark Twain Project Online (UCCL 13171).