k of travels like scenery--the impressions of St. Moritz
which remain with me have something of the quality, for me, of the
illustrations in a French novel. I like to consult them; they are so
crisp and daintily defined and isolated and individual. Yet I can only
write about an upper class German mamma eating brodchen and honey with
three fair square daughters, young, younger, youngest, and not a flaxen
hair mislaid among them, and the intelligent accuracy with which they
looked out of the window and said that it was a horse, the horse was
lame, and it was a pity to drive a lame horse. Or about the two American
ladies from the south, creeping, wrapped up in sealskins, along the
still white road from the Hof to the Bad, and saying one to the other,
"Isn't it nice to feel the sun on yo' back?" Or about the curio shops on
the ridge where the politest little Frenchwomen endeavour to persuade
you that you have come to the very top of the Engadine for the purpose
of buying Japanese candlesticks and Italian scarves to carry down again.
It was all so clear and sharp and still at St. Moritz; everything drew
a double significance from its height and its loneliness. But, as poppa
says, a great deal of trouble would be saved if people who feel that
they can't describe things would be willing to consider the alternative
of leaving them alone; and I will only dwell on St. Moritz long enough
to say that it nearly shattered one of Mr. Mafferton's most cherished
principles. Never in his life before, he said, had he felt inclined to
take warm water in his bath in the morning. He made a note of the
temperature of his tub to send to the _Times_. "You never can tell," he
said, "the effect these little things may have." I was beginning to be
accustomed to the effect they had on me.

Before we got to Coire the cool rushing night had come and the glaciers
had blotted themselves out. I find a mere note against Coire to the
effect that it often rains when you arrive there, and also that it is a
place in which you may count on sleeping particularly sound if you come
by diligence; but there is no reason why I should not mention that it
was under the sway of the Dukes of Swabia until 1268, as momma wishes me
to do so. We took the train there for Constance, and between Coire and
Constance, on the Bodensee, occurred Rorshach and Romanshorn; but we
didn't get out, and, as momma says, there was nothing in the least
individual about their railway station