room to themselves, the
town guests had their plain bare _Speisesaal_, and we Britishers
possessed the summer house; so we were all happy. The whole glory of
the place was in the forest; for it was not flat sandy forest that has
no undergrowth, and wearies you very soon with its sameness and its
still, oppressive air. It was up hill and down dale forest, full of
lovely glades, broken by massive dolomite rocks; the trees not set in
serried rows, but growing for the most part as the birds and the wind
planted them; a varied natural forest tended but not dragooned by man.
The flowers there were a delight to us, for we arrived early enough in
the year to find lilies of the valley growing in great quantities
amongst the rocks, while a little later the stream and pathways were
bordered by oak and beech fern and by many wild orchises that are rare
now with us. It was not here, however, but in another German forest,
where, one day when I had no time to linger, I met people with great
bunches of the _Cypripedium calceolus_ that they had gathered as we
gather primroses. At the Bavarian watering-place we had the whole
forest as much to ourselves as the summer house, for no one seemed to
wander farther than the seats placed amongst the trees by the
_Verschoenerungsverein_.

"Warum willst du weiter schweifen
Sieh das Gute liegt so nah,"

says Goethe, and most Germans out for their summer holiday seem to
take his advice in the most literal way, and find their happiness as
near home as they possibly can.

When you begin to think about the actual process of travelling in
Germany, the tiresome business of getting from the city to the forest
village, for instance, you at once remember both the many complaints
you have heard Germans make of our system, or rather want of system,
and the bitter scorn poured on German fussiness by travelling Britons.
The ways of one nation are certainly not the ways of another in this
respect. Directly I cross the German frontier I know that I am safe
from muddle and mistakes, that I need not look after myself or my
luggage, that I cannot get into a wrong train or alight at a wrong
station, or suffer any injury through carelessness or mismanagement.
Everything is managed for me, and on long journeys in the corridor
trains things are well managed. But your carriage is far more likely
to be unpleasantly crowded in Germany than in England; and as
hand-luggage is not charged for, the public takes all