ghing party differs from a picnic. The people who
want each other cannot go off together and lose themselves, leaving the
bores to find only each other. You are in close company from early morn
till late at night. We were to drive twenty miles, six in a sledge, dine
together in a lonely _Wirtschaft_, dance and sing songs, and afterwards
drive home by moonlight. Success depends on every member of the company
fitting into his place and assisting in the general harmony. Our
chieftainess was fixing the final arrangements the evening before in the
drawing-room of the _pension_. One place was still to spare.

"Tompkins!"

Two voices uttered the name simultaneously; three others immediately took
up the refrain. Tompkins was our man--the cheeriest, merriest companion
imaginable. Tompkins alone could be trusted to make the affair a
success. Tompkins, who had only arrived that afternoon, was pointed out
to our chieftainess. We could hear his good-tempered laugh from where we
sat, grouped together at the other end of the room. Our chieftainess
rose, and made for him direct.

Alas! she was a short-sighted lady--we had not thought of that. She
returned in triumph, followed by a dismal-looking man I had met the year
before in the Black Forest, and had hoped never to meet again. I drew
her aside.

"Whatever you do," I said, "don't ask --- " (I forget his name. One of
these days I'll forget him altogether, and be happier. I will call him
Johnson.) "He would turn the whole thing into a funeral before we were
half-way there. I climbed a mountain with him once. He makes you forget
all your other troubles; that is the only thing he is good for."

"But who is Johnson?" she demanded. "Why, that's Johnson," I
explained--"the thing you've brought over. Why on earth didn't you leave
it alone? Where's your woman's instinct?"

"Great heavens!" she cried, "I thought it was Tompkins. I've invited
him, and he's accepted."

She was a stickler for politeness, and would not hear of his being told
that he had been mistaken for an agreeable man, but that the error, most
fortunately, had been discovered in time. He started a row with the
driver of the sledge, and devoted the journey outwards to an argument on
the fiscal question. He told the proprietor of the hotel what he thought
of German cooking, and insisted on having the windows open. One of our
party--a German student--sang, "Deutschland, Deutschland uber
alles,"--wh