"Well, now, you take my advice, and get a calico suit and a sunshade.
Never mind the look of the thing. You be comfortable. You've no idea of
the heat on the Continent at this time of the year. English people will
persist in travelling about the Continent in the same stuffy clothes that
they wear at home. That's how so many of them get sunstrokes, and are
ruined for life."
I went into the club, and there I met a friend of mine--a newspaper
correspondent--who has travelled a good deal, and knows Europe pretty
well. I told him what my two other friends had said, and asked him which
I was to believe. He said:
"Well, as a matter of fact, they are both right. You see, up in those
hilly districts, the weather changes very quickly. In the morning it may
be blazing hot, and you will be melting, and in the evening you may be
very glad of a flannel shirt and a fur coat."
"Why, that is exactly the sort of weather we have in England!" I
exclaimed. "If that's all these foreigners can manage in their own
country, what right have they to come over here, as they do, and grumble
about our weather?"
"Well, as a matter of fact," he replied, "they haven't any right; but you
can't stop them--they will do it. No, you take my advice, and be
prepared for everything. Take a cool suit and some thin things, for if
it's hot, and plenty of warm things in case it is cold."
When I got home I found Mrs. Briggs there, she having looked in to see
how the baby was. She said:--
"Oh! if you're going anywhere near Germany, you take a bit of soap with
you."
She said that Mr. Briggs had been called over to Germany once in a hurry,
on business, and had forgotten to take a piece of soap with him, and
didn't know enough German to ask for any when he got over there, and
didn't see any to ask for even if he had known, and was away for three
weeks, and wasn't able to wash himself all the time, and came home so
dirty that they didn't know him, and mistook him for the man that was to
come to see what was the matter with the kitchen boiler.
Mrs. Briggs also advised me to take some towels with me, as they give you
such small towels to wipe on.