to within a yard of my table and made a quivering golden line of light
against the blue sparkle of the sea. White butterflies danced above it.
The breeze coming over it blew sweet country smells in my face. The
chestnut leaves shading me rustled and whispered. All the world was gay
and fresh and scented, and if the traveller does not think these
delights make up for doubtful cookery, why does he travel?

The _Frau Foerster_ insisted on showing me the bedrooms. They are simple
and very clean, each one with a beautiful view. The rest of the house,
including the dining-room, does not lend itself to enthusiastic
description. I saw the long table at which the four-and-twenty painters
eat. They were doing it when I looked in, and had been doing it the
whole time I was under the chestnuts. It was not because of the many
dishes that they sat there so long, but because of the few waiters.
There were at least forty people learning to be patient, and one waiter
and a boy to drive the lesson home. The bathing, too, at Vilm cannot be
mentioned in the same breath with the glorious bathing at Lauterbach.
There is no smiling attendant in a white sunbonnet waiting to take your
things and dry them, to rub you down when you come out shivering, and if
needful jump in and pull you out when you begin to drown. At Vilm the
bathing-hut lies on the east shore, and you go to it across a
meadow--the divinest strip of meadow, it is true, with sea behind you
and sea before you, and cattle pasturing, and a general radiant air
about it as though at any moment the daughters of the gods might come
over the buttercups to bleach their garments whiter in the sun. But
beautiful as it is, it is a very hot walk, and there is no path. Except
the path through the rye from the landing-stage up to the inn there is
not a regular path on the island--only a few tracks here and there where
the cows are driven home in the evening; and to reach the bathing-hut
you must plunge straight through meadow-grass, and not mind grasshoppers
hopping into your clothes. Then the water is so shallow just there that
you must wade quite a dangerous-looking distance before, lying down, it
will cover you; and while you are wading, altogether unable, as he who
has waded knows, to hurry your steps, however urgent the need, you blush
to think that some or all of the four-and-twenty painters are probably
sitting on rocks observing you. Wading back, of course, you blush still
more. I neve