I am, unlike your flowers, sold,
You are so very fat and old.
SUGGESTED MOTTO FOR THE AËRATED BREAD COMPANY.
.... "His sleep
Was aëry light, from pure digestion bred."
Paradise Lost, B. V., line 4.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
There is no doubt that one's first impressions are always the brightest and the best; therefore I resolve to record the first impressions of a first visit to the Italian lakes.
British Bellagio.—"Hôtel Victoria, Prince de Galles et des Iles Britanniques," or some such name, is usually, as Baedeker says, "frequented by the English." They are here certainly, and one hears one's native language everywhere. There are the honeymoon couples, silent and reserved, who glare fiercely at anyone who might be supposed to imagine for a moment that they are newly married; there are people who converse in low monotonous voices about the weather, which changes every hour; there is an old lady, who gives one startling information, telling one, for instance, that Paul Veronese was born at Verona; and there are two or three British menservants, gazing with superb disdain at the poor foreigners. The hotel is very quiet. The evening of a week-day is like Sunday evening, and Sunday evening is——!!! If only the weather were not also English, or even worse. On the last day of September the only warm place is by the fire in the fumoir. So let us hurry off from this wintry climate to somewhere, to anywhere. By the first boat we go.
