our women were smoking, two children were sucking peppermints,
and an old married couple were eating their lunch, consisting chiefly of
garlic. At a junction, the door was thrown open. The foreigner opens
the door a little way, glides in, and closes it behind him. This was not
a foreigner, but an American lady, _en voyage_, accompanied by five other
American ladies. They marched in carrying packages. They could not find
six seats together, so they scattered up and down the carriage. The
first thing that each woman did, the moment she could get her hands free,
was to dash for the nearest window and haul it down.

"Astonishes me," said the first woman, "that somebody is not dead in this
carriage."

Their idea, I think, was that through asphyxiation we had become
comatose, and, but for their entrance, would have died unconscious.

"It is a current of air that is wanted," said another of the ladies.

So they opened the door at the front of the carriage and four of them
stood outside on the platform, chatting pleasantly and admiring the
scenery, while two of them opened the door at the other end, and took
photographs of the Lake of Geneva. The carriage rose and cursed them in
six languages. Bells were rung: conductors came flying in. It was all
of no use. Those American ladies were cheerful but firm. They argued
with volubility: they argued standing in the open doorway. The
conductors, familiar, no doubt, with the American lady and her ways,
shrugged their shoulders and retired. The other passengers undid their
bags and bundles, and wrapped themselves up in shawls and Jaeger
nightshirts.

I met the ladies afterwards in Lausanne. They told me they had been
condemned to a fine of forty francs apiece. They also explained to me
that they had not the slightest intention of paying it.

CHAPTER VII

Too much Postcard.

The postcard craze is dying out in Germany--the land of its birth--I am
told. In Germany they do things thoroughly, or not at all. The German
when he took to sending postcards abandoned almost every other pursuit in
life. The German tourist never knew where he had been until on reaching
home again he asked some friend or relation to allow him to look over the
postcards he had sent. Then it was he began to enjoy his trip.

"What a charming old town!" the German tourist would exclaim. "I wish I
could have found time while I was there to have gone outside the hotel
and have had a