_BEING A FEW NOTES TAKEN EN ROUTE IN SEARCH OF A PERFECT CURE._
"Oh! he's ever so much better. Why he only had two stumbles, and one
cropper, doing his three hundred yards this morning. That beats the
record, anyhow."
Young JERRYMAN is describing the effect the Engelberg air is already
having on the Dilapidated One to several people, who have either been
invalided themselves, or have had invalid relatives, or met, seen, or
heard of invalids who have had similar satisfactory experiences.
"You know, I think the dining has a great deal to do with the
beneficent effects of the place," remarked, meekly, a mild-mannered
Clergyman, who, had been brought up here apparently to "get tone."
"You can't sit down to table with three hundred people," he continued,
meditatively; as if the solution of the social problem had caused him
some anxious thought, "without being inclined to launch out a little
more than one does under ordinary conditions at home. Only I wish
they wouldn't think it necessary to keep their dining-saloon at such
an excessive temperature, and waste quite so much time between the
different courses."
[Illustration: A Pleasant Little Excursion.]
And here the mild-mannered Clergyman had real ground for complaint;
for the German recipe for _table d'hôte_ dinner seems to be something
very much like the following:--Get a room that has been smoked in,
with closed and tightly-fastened windows and doors, all the morning.
Light the stove, if there is one, and turn on the gas, if there is
any. You begin your dinner. Take twice, thrice, or, even four times of
every course, glaring savagely and defiantly at your neighbour as you
pass the dish. Sit over each, allowing a good quarter of an hour for
its proper digestion, and keep this up till the perspiration drops
from your face. Finally, in about two hours' time, having carefully
mopped your forehead, quit the table for the "Conversations Saal."
Here (still keeping in gas and stove, if there is one) smoke till you
can't see six feet before you. Keep this up till you have had enough
of it, and feel the time is getting on for you to go through a
modified edition of the same process at supper. At least, this is how
the German element--a very formidable one at the Hôtel Titlis--for
the most part, conducted itself over the principal meal of the day.
There were, of course, exceptions, for all Germany is not essentially
German; yet it must be confessed that the prevailing features were
of this guzzling, and, for the want of a more descriptive word, I
would add, "sweltering" type, not fully appreciated by the ordinary
travelling Briton, who, whatever else he may be, is not a gross
feeder, though he does set the proper value on a breath of pure fresh
air.
"Get him up? Of course we can get him up," rejoined Dr. MELCHISIDEC,
warmly. This in answer to some doubts expressed by one of the more
cautions spirits of our party as to the possibility of dragging the
Dilapidated One over one of the stock excursions of the neighbourhood,
to wit, the Fürren Alp. "Why, put him into a _chaise à porteur_, and
we could get him up the Titlis itself, and throw in the Schlossstock,
and the Gross-Spannort, for the matter of that, as well. _Baedeker_
makes only a two and a half hours' affair of it."
And so we find ourselves in due course, doing the "Fürren-Alp" in
approved style.
"By Jove, I'll be hanged if I think it's a bit better than going up
Primrose Hill, twenty times running: and not near such good going
either," observes young JERRYMAN, after we have been struggling up a
precipitous mountain path, occasionally finding ourselves sliding and
slipping backwards in the bed of a disused watercourse, for about two
hours and a half.
And really I think young JERRYMAN's view of the matter is not so very
far out, after all.
* * * * *
ONE RITE, AND ALL WRONG.--The "Service of Reconciliation" in St.
Paul's seems to have had the effect of setting everyone by the ears.
Quite a muddle,--a Western Church, and an Easton rite.
* * * * *