THE TRAVELLER'S VADE MECUM.
Question. I understand that you are leaving Town. Why?
Answer. Because it is the fashion.
Q. Have you any plans?
A. I am a little undecided. At first I thought of going to an English watering-place, but abandoned the idea because the papers said I should be sure to be laid up with typhoid fever, German measles, or something equally pleasant.
Q. Had it not been for this dread, should you have gone?
A. I suppose so. We are acclimatised to the discomforts of seaside lodgings, the discords of second-rate German bands, and the disillusions of country views.
Q. For the sake of argument, abandoning the English watering-place—where shall you go?
A. My wife says Paris—and means it.
Q. Do you object yourself to the gay capital?
A. Well—just now—yes; chiefly because it is not gay.
Q. I suppose you would prefer the principal theatres to be open?
A. If I could attend them without being sure that I should find the "hot room" of a Turkish bath considerably cooler. Not that there would not be a risk of being grilled to death on the Boulevards and bored out of my life by running across hundreds of personally-conducted tourists.
Q. Then why should you go?
A. Because my wife wishes to see the bonnets.
Q. Could she see them nowhere else?
A. Not to her satisfaction, although I believe she could find their counterparts in Tottenham Court Road and the Westbourne Grove.
Q. After Paris where shall you go?
A. Either to Switzerland, Italy, or Holland.
Q. Do you expect much amusement?
A. Not much, because I know them by heart. Still I know the best hotels, or rather the best table d'hôtes.
Q. Is that all you care for?
A. Nearly all. However it is a languid satisfaction to compare St. Peter's with St. Paul's to the disadvantage of the former, and to think there is nothing in Switzerland to equal the Trossachs, Loch Maree and the Cumberland Lakes.
Q. But the Art treasures?
A. May be found en bloc at the South Kensington Museum.
Q. Then you travel in rather a gloomy mood.
A. Rather. Still I am buoyed up with a delightful prospect in the future.
Q. A delightful prospect! What prospect?
A. The prospect of returning home!
Scarcely "Butter."—To change the nickname of Madge to Margarine.