Rollo in Geneva

Rollo is twelve, and his father and mother have brought him to Geneva, where the Rhone runs out of the lake so clear that people stop on the bridges to look down at it. Jacob Abbott builds each chapter on something a boy could actually do: the night diligence ride from Lyons, an evening watching the sunset light die off Mont Blanc, a steamer the length of the lake to Villeneuve and the Castle of Chillon, a walk up the valley to Aigle, a present chosen in one of the watch shops that made the city famous. There is a scare as well, when Rollo takes an oar in a rowboat and the current under the bridges gets away from the boys. Seventh of the ten Rollo’s Tour in Europe books, with the geography folded quietly into the holiday.