.
There was a notice up that all vehicles must drive through it at a
walking pace, so we crawled along its principal street which, whatever
else it contained, contained no sign of August. This street has Prince
Putbus's grounds on one side and a line of irregular houses, all white,
all old-fashioned, and all charming, on the other. A double row of great
trees forms a shady walk on the edge of the grounds, and it is
bountifully supplied with those stone seats so fatal, I am sure, to many
an honest bath-guest. The grounds, trim and shady, have neat paths
winding into their recesses from the road, with no fence or wall or
obstacle of any sort to be surmounted by the timid tourist; every
tourist may walk in them as long and as often as he likes without the
least preliminary bother of gates and lodges.

As we jolted slowly over the rough stones we were objects of the
liveliest interest to the bath-guests sitting out on the pavement in
front of the inns having supper. No sign whatever of August was to be
seen, not even an ordnance map, as I had half expected, lying in the
road. Our cart made more noise here than ever, it being characteristic
of Putbus that things on wheels are heard for an amazing time before and
after their passing. It is the drowsiest little town. Grass grows
undisturbed between the cobbles of the street, along the gutters, and in
the cracks of the pavement on the sidewalk. One or two shops seem
sufficient for the needs of all the inhabitants, including the boys at
the school here which is a sort of German Eton, and from what I saw in
the windows their needs are chiefly picture-postcards and cakes. There
is a white theatre with a colonnade as quaint as all the rest. The
houses have many windows and balconies hung about with flowers. The
place did not somehow seem real in the bright flood of evening sunlight,
it looked like a place in a picture or a dream; but the bath-guests,
pausing in their eating to stare at us, were enjoying themselves in a
very solid and undreamlike fashion, not in the least in harmony with the
quaint background. In spite of my forlorn condition I could not help
reflecting on its probable charms in winter under the clear green of the
cold sky, with all these people away, when the frosted branches of the
trees stretch across to deserted windows, when the theatre is silent for
months, when the inns only keep as much of themselves open as meets the
requirements of the infrequent commercia