Smile at the Bills.

415

in Italian. What, then, should a man look at, if he has no real interest in churches, palaces, or museums? There is an endless fund of gratification, if he will draw upon it, in merely prowling about, with his eyes open. Let him only feel in his conscience that he is not playing the hypocrite, and he will find everything interesting.

There is another piece of advice I would give to every traveller: smile at the bills. Take one with another, and the expense will barely exceed your estimate at the worst. But never suffer little extortions to annoy you. You are, we will suppose, charged double the intrinsic value of your meal; well, if you will keep on calculating the price of mutton, you had better have stayed at home, and stuck to the shop. At any rate, Boniface must live; and what better opportunity for him to realise this resolution, when he hears a hungry moneyed Englishman ask: "Esker voo zavey kelker shose poor deenay?" Half the year he is without customers, unless you count those who order coffee, call for a toothpick, smoke their own cigars, and spit on the floor. He can't live on them. Somebody must help to pay the rent and feed the little ones.

There are those who say that, if you want

416

Monsieur in the Train.

to travel with comfort and economy, you should go to the second-rate inns, and live on the best. The tariff is lower, and you squint proudly among the blind. You are welcomed and dismissed with attention. This may happen sometimes, but an inferior hotel is often dear as well as bad.

Seldom travel first-class abroad, or you will find yourself in the company of English invalids. To me, the travelling in the society of foreigners provides continuous matter for odd observations. Their hats, their queer articles of luggage, their patient respect for the arrangements of the road, and the officials, are always surprising. See them flattening their noses against the window of the waiting-room, as the train pulls up; notice the submissive way in which they show their tickets to the porter, and the politeness with which they touch their hats to society when they enter the carriage. We might take a leaf out of their book here.

Then, when the journey is done, how patiently they wait for the luggage, which the porters will not let them touch till the van is emptied, and all is arranged under the initial letters of the passengers' names, or the different points of their departure. That great

Foreign Railway Regulations.

417

moustached fellow will watch the process without a murmur, though he has only a tight little hair-trunk, with slips of wood nailed on it, and sees it deposited, close by, among the first. He must wait, perhaps, for twenty minutes, while the porters jabber over illegible directions, and arrange a whole waggon-load of packages with provoking conscientiousness. He must wait; he has no Times to write tohe must wait, though his dinner be doing the very same thing in the next street.

One often, however, forgets the obedience due to regulations. I recollect that once last year I forget at what station-believing myself rather late, I tapped at the window of the ticket-office. Up rushed an elderly official, and checked me with horrified gestures. Had I offered to sneeze while kissing the emperor's hand, he could not have shown a greater sense of the impropriety; so I blushed, and waited half an hour.

In dining at table-d'hôtes always take something of what is offered, however disguised. Otherwise, when you have missed several opportunities, you may all at once find yourself pulled up with compote, and left with nothing between you and starvation but a tureen of stewed plums. Those table-d'hôte dinners

418 The Secret of Enjoyment in Travelling.

have a trick of sudden finality; the meal comes to an abrupt end; and there is not even bread and cheese wherewith to fill the vacuum which you abhor. Chickens and salad are generally the last course; when they come, it is then or never. Do not be coy, however tempted to let the chance slip by, while you are wondering why French fowls have always four legs, to say nothing of duplicate drumsticks, as if they had been lame, and used crutches, which were cooked at the patient's decease.

The secret of all travelling is to be unfettered-to cast off those conventional irritating restraints which are necessary at home, and to move about when, how, and where we like, in our own foolish, easy way. This allows both body and mind to uncoil themselves thus we get that without which labour and rest are insufficient, however carefully balanced-namely, recreation.

( 419 )

B

BACK AGAIN.

ACK again to dear, old, misty, grumbling England-back again to London fog and mud, and sturdy snobbishness, from the glittering Alpine snow, and the deep-blue Italian lake, and the bowing, close-cropped Monsieur. Hurrah! for home, after a summer away on the paper-sanded, flimsy-journaled, many-hatted, harness-roped, table-d'hôted Continent. The run back was delicious. I had had some business to do abroad, and therefore could not return directly the whim took me. I was bound to remain up to a certain date, whether I grew tired of foreign scenery and cooks or not. But directly the term of my engagement was up, I hastened back, partly because I had pressing business at home, partly because I was getting rather bored by Monsieur. Excellent fellow! we English owe him more than we can repay; we give him a change, no doubt, when he visits us, but small entertainment. We are too glum to