But the valley is not seated so high among the clouds to be eternally

exempt from changes. The clouds gather, black as ink; the wind
bursts rudely in; day after day the mists drive overhead, the snow-

flakes flutter down in blinding disarray; daily the mail comes in
later from the top of the pass; people peer through their windows and

foresee no end but an entire seclusion from Europe, and death by
gradual dry-rot, each in his indifferent inn; and when at last the

storm goes, and the sun comes again, behold a world of unpolluted
snow, glossy like fur, bright like daylight, a joy to wallowing dogs

and cheerful to the souls of men. Or perhaps from across storied and
malarious Italy, a wind cunningly winds about the mountains and

breaks, warm and unclean, upon our mountain valley. Every nerve is
set ajar; the conscience recognises, at a gust, a load of sins and

negligences hitherto unknown; and the whole invalid world huddles
into its private chambers, and silently recognises the empire of the

Fohn.
CHAPTER XI - ALPINE DIVERSIONS

THERE will be no lack of diversion in an Alpine sanitarium. The
place is half English, to be sure, the local sheet appearing in

double column, text and translation; but it still remains half
German; and hence we have a band which is able to play, and a company

of actors able, as you will be told, to act. This last you will take
on trust, for the players, unlike the local sheet, confine themselves

to German and though at the beginning of winter they come with their
wig-boxes to each hotel in turn, long before Christmas they will have

given up the English for a bad job. There will follow, perhaps, a
skirmish between the two races; the German element seeking, in the

interest of their actors, to raise a mysterious item, the KUR-TAXE,
which figures heavily enough already in the weekly bills, the English

element stoutly resisting. Meantime in the English hotels home-
played farces, TABLEAUX-VIVANTS, and even balls enliven the evenings;

a charity bazaar sheds genialconsternation; Christmas and New Year
are solemnised with Pantagruelian dinners, and from time to time the

young folks carol and revolve untunefully enough through the figures
of a singing quadrille.

A magazine club supplies you with everything, from the QUARTERLY to
the SUNDAY AT HOME. Grand tournaments are organised at chess,

draughts, billiards and whist. Once and again wandering artists drop
into our mountain valley, coming you know not whence, going you

cannot imagine whither, and belonging to every degree in the
hierarchy of musical art, from the recognised performer who announces

a concert for the evening, to the comic German family or solitary
long-haired German baritone, who surprises the guests at dinner-time

with songs and a collection. They are all of them good to see; they,
at least, are moving; they bring with them the sentiment of the open

road; yesterday, perhaps, they were in Tyrol, and next week they will
be far in Lombardy, while all we sick folk still simmer in our

mountain prison. Some of them, too, are welcome as the flowers in
May for their own sake; some of them may have a human voice; some may

have that magic which transforms a wooden box into a song-bird, and
what we jeeringly call a fiddle into what we mention with respect as

a violin. From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking
pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there

is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that
unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of

man at the touch of the true virtuoso. Even that you may perhaps
enjoy; and if you do so you will own it impossible to enjoy it more

keenly than here, IM SCHNEE DER ALPEN. A hyacinth in a pot, a
handful of primroses packed in moss, or a piece of music by some one

who knows the way to the heart of a violin, are things that, in this
invariable sameness of the snows and frosty air, surprise you like an

adventure. It is droll, moreover, to compare the respect with which
the invalids attend a concert, and the ready contempt with which they

greet the dinner-time performers. Singing which they would hear with
real enthusiasm - possibly with tears - from a corner of a drawing-

room, is listened to with laughter when it is offered by an unknown
professional and no money has been taken at the door.

Of skating little need be said; in so snowy a climate the rinks must
be intelligently managed; their mismanagement will lead to many days

of vexation and some petty quarrelling, but when all goes well, it is
certainly curious, and perhaps rather unsafe, for the invalid to

skate under a burning sun, and walk back to his hotel in a sweat,
through long tracts of glare and passages of freezing shadow. But

the peculiar outdoor sport of this district is tobogganing. A
Scotchman may remember the low flat board, with the front wheels on a

pivot, which was called a HURLIE; he may remember this contrivance,
laden with boys, as, laboriously started, it ran rattling down the

brae, and was, now successfully, now unsuccessfully, steered round
the corner at the foot; he may remember scented summer evenings

passed in this diversion, and many a grazed skin, bloody cockscomb,
and neglected lesson. The toboggan is to the hurlie what the sled is

to the carriage; it is a hurlie upon runners; and if for a grating
road you substitute a long declivity of beaten snow, you can imagine

the giddy career of the tobogganist. The correct position is to sit;
but the fantastic will sometimes sit hind-foremost, or dare the

descent upon their belly or their back. A few steer with a pair of
pointed sticks, but it is more classical to use the feet. If the

weight be heavy and the track smooth, the toboggan takes the bit
between its teeth; and to steer a couple of full-sized friends in

safety requires not only judgment but desperateexertion. On a very
steep track, with a keen evening frost, you may have moments almost

too appalling to be called enjoyment; the head goes, the world
vanishes; your blind steed bounds below your weight; you reach the

foot, with all the breath knocked out of your body, jarred and
bewildered as though you had just been subjected to a railway

accident. Another element of joyfulhorror is added by the formation
of a train; one toboggan being tied to another, perhaps to the number

of half a dozen, only the first rider being allowed to steer, and all
the rest pledged to put up their feet and follow their leader, with

heart in mouth, down the mad descent. This, particularly if the
track begins with a headlongplunge, is one of the most exhilarating

follies in the world, and the tobogganing invalid is early reconciled
to somersaults.

There is all manner of variety in the nature of the tracks, some
miles in length, others but a few yards, and yet like some short

rivers, furious in their brevity. All degrees of skill and courage
and taste may be suited in your neighbourhood. But perhaps the true

way to toboggan is alone and at night. First comes the tedious
climb, dragging your instrument behind you. Next a long breathing-

space, alone with snow and pinewoods, cold, silent and solemn to the
heart. Then you push of; the toboggan fetches way; she begins to

feel the hill, to glide, to, swim, to gallop. In a breath you are
out from under the pine trees, and a whole heavenful of stars reels

and flashes overhead. Then comes a vicious effort; for by this time
your wooden steed is speeding like the wind, and you are spinning

round a corner, and the whole glittering valley and all the lights in
all the great hotels lie for a moment at your feet; and the next you

are racing once more in the shadow of the night with close-shut teeth
and beating heart. Yet a little while and you will be landed on the

highroad by the door of your own hotel. This, in an atmosphere
tingling with forty degrees of frost, in a night made luminous with

stars and snow, and girt with strange white mountains, teaches the
pulse an unaccustomed tune and adds a new excitement to the life of

man upon his planet.
CHAPTER XII - THE STIMULATION OF THE ALPS

To any one who should come from a southern sanitarium to the Alps,
the row of sun-burned faces round the table would present the first

surprise. He would begin by looking for the invalids, and he would
lose his pains, for not one out of five of even the bad cases bears

the mark of sickness on his face. The plump sunshine from above and
its strong reverberation from below colour the skin like an Indian

climate; the treatment, which consists mainly of the open air,
exposes even the sickliest to tan, and a tableful of invalids comes,

in a month or two, to resemble a tableful of hunters. But although
he may be thus surprised at the first glance, his astonishment will

grow greater, as he experiences the effects of the climate on
himself. In many ways it is a trying business to reside upon the

Alps: the stomach is exercised, the appetite often languishes; the
liver may at times rebel; and because you have come so far from

metropolitan advantages, it does not follow that you shall recover.
But one thing is undeniable - that in the rare air, clear, cold, and