DE GUSTIBUS——
I am an unadventurous man,
And always go upon the plan
Of shunning danger where I can.
And so I fail to understand
Why every year a stalwart band
Of tourists go to Switzerland,
And spend their time for several weeks,
With quaking hearts and pallid cheeks,
Scaling abrupt and windy peaks.
In fact, I'm old enough to find
Climbing of almost any kind
Is very little to my mind.
A mountain summit white with snow
Is an attractive sight, I know,
But why not see it from below?
Why leave the hospitable plain
And scale Mont Blanc with toil and pain
Merely to scramble down again?
Some men pretend they think it bliss
To clamber up a precipice
Or dangle over an abyss,
To crawl along a mountain side,
Supported by a rope that's tied,
—Not too securely—to a guide;
But such pretences, it is clear,
In the aspiring mountaineer
And many a climber, I'll be bound,
Whom scarped and icy crags surround,
Wishes himself on level ground.
So I, for one, do not propose,
To cool my comfortable toes
In regions of perpetual snows,
As long as I can take my ease,
Fanned by a soothing southern breeze,
Under the shade of English trees.
And anyone who leaves my share
Of English fields and English air
May take the Alps for aught I care!
Sport most Appropriate to the Locality.—Shooting pigeons at Monte Carlo.
Pleasure à la Russe.—Q. When does a Russian give a Polish peasant a holiday?
A. When he gives him a knouting.
The Cry of the Holiday-loving Clerk.—"Easterward Ho!"
A dish that disagrees with most Persons when Travelling.—The Chops of the Channel.
The Greatest Bore in Creation.—The Simplon Tunnel.
The Brown Family Resolve To Spend Their Vacation Each After His Own Fashion, Instead Of en Famille.
| Jack took his motor car of course. | Maud and Ethel started on a Biking Tour. |
| "My Dear Sir, I tell you there is not a city in the whole of Europe that is a patch upon Florence. Why I found the finest English chemists there that I have come across in all my travels." | |
| Pater preferred "Cooks". |
| Mater had "quiet time" in Devonshire. | Bob went canoeing. |
While Mary Ann says 'Give me good ole Margit'.
