up his mind to _always_ start on a Friday;
and he always did, and always had a good time.

He said that he would never, upon any consideration, start for a trip
upon any other day but a Friday now. It was so absurd, this superstition
about Friday.

So we agreed to start on the Friday, and I am to meet him at Victoria
Station at a quarter to eight in the evening.

THURSDAY, 22ND

The Question of Luggage.--First Friend's Suggestion.--Second Friend's
Suggestion.--Third Friend's Suggestion.--Mrs. Briggs' Advice.--Our
Vicar's Advice.--His Wife's Advice.--Medical Advice.--Literary
Advice.--George's Recommendation.--My Sister-in-Law's Help.--Young
Smith's Counsel.--My Own Ideas.--B.'s Idea.

I have been a good deal worried to-day about the question of what luggage
to take with me. I met a man this morning, and he said:

"Oh, if you are going to Ober-Ammergau, mind you take plenty of warm
clothing with you. You'll need all your winter things up there."

He said that a friend of his had gone up there some years ago, and had
not taken enough warm things with him, and had caught a chill there, and
had come home and died. He said:

"You be guided by me, and take plenty of warm things with you."

I met another man later on, and he said:

"I hear you are going abroad. Now, tell me, what part of Europe are you
going to?"

I replied that I thought it was somewhere about the middle. He said:

"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