Edith. "Mabel dear, would you get me Baedeker's Switzerland and the last Number of the World."
Mabel. "What do you want them for?"
Edith. "Oh, I'm writing Letters, and we're in the Engadine, you know, and I just want to describe some of our favourite Haunts, and mention a few of the People who are staying there—here, I mean."
Taking the Waters.—Are the Falls of Foyers worth preserving? That depends on another question—What are the Falls of Foyers? They are the finest cascade in Bonny Scotland, and the B. A. C., or British Aluminium Company, intends to take all the water out of them to turn its machinery with. Not, mind you, a mere inappreciable rill, but the whole river! "Ma Foi-ers!" exclaimed Mr. Punch in his best French, when he read the correspondence on this subject in the North British Daily Mail, the Glasgow Herald, and other northern papers; "shall this vandalism be allowed? No! Foyers must be preserved for-years to come!" It seems that a Dr. Common, a director of the B. A. C., has been explaining to the Inverness Field Club that the Falls won't actually be destroyed—only there will be no water in them! Yet, by his name, this director should defend all common rights. We hope he is rare. The B. A. C. (or Brazen Assurance Company) must learn the A B C of respect for natural beauty, or Mr. Bryce will have to introduce an "Access to Waterfalls Bill." There is yet time to save the chief Wonder of Loch Ness; and a year hence let us trust that the following Wordsworthian stanza will apply:—
Full many a glorious scene has Punch
Saved by his winsome page;
And from the B. A. C. this Fall,
A lovely, powerless, hopeless, thrall,
Was rescued by the Sage.
So let it foam! And time will come
When every tourist raider
At this Cascade will give three cheers
For every good Casc-aider!
An Old Crusted Port.—The "Battle of the Mails" is again raging in Ireland. Queenstown seemed to have conquered, but, according to the Cork Daily Herald, the partisans of Southampton are insidiously working in favour of that port, because it is believed that "a Unionist Government with a powerful majority will be less amenable to Irish pressure than the late Home-Rule Government was." And the very idea of the Post Office breaking through the contract with the Cunard Line, the Dublin Steam Packet Company, and the London and North-Western Railway is denounced as a monstrous offence. That is all right, and it is refreshing to find so much respect for contracts still surviving. In postal and steamer matters Ireland is Conservative to the backbone. She won't doff her "coat of mail" in a hurry. Home-Rulers and Unionists are united on this point: "one touch at Queenstown makes all Erin glad."
The South Wales Daily News tells us that "policemen on bicycles are a very common thing in Cardiganshire."