"Dey von't let me!"
OBERLANDED A LA MODE.
OUR OWN TORRIST IN NORTH DEVON.
Up in railway; all Switzerland is now "up in railway." Revisiting simple spot opposite Jungfrau; here twenty years ago. "Simple!" Electric light; shops; telescopes; tourists everywhere! They sprawl on hillocks like Bank-holiday-Virginia-Waterers! Just heard one ask waiter, "'Ow many feet are we 'ere above the sea?" "One tousing eight 'undred mètres." "What's the good of meters?" What indeed? Electric light everywhere. Everybody telescoping chamois, and buying photographs; photographs chiefly of other places; all the same when you return home. Men attired like golfers; women in gaiters; exercise, principally shopping. Simple Switzeresses outside toy-booths, talk excellent English, but all in national costume. N.B. National costume can be purchased.
There used to be only half an inn here; there are now five hotels, with a beer-garden, and inevitable casino. Dancing every night. Like to watch fair, fat, sentimental German waltzing solemnly. Elderly Darby of Albion, too, capering the newest shuffles and reverses, would surprise his wife Joan at home. "Darby is devoted to climbing, and I was glad to let him return to the primitive little place I remember on our honeymoon." That is what she thinks. Climbing! Not a bit of it! Most here, when fagged out with shopping, take guide and porter up the "Shamhorn." There's a "Shamhorn" album now wherein proud mountaineers exhibit flights of fancy in their records that one could never guess from their countenances. At table d'hôte not a few of Svengali's opinion, that "only the dirty want to wash." But the water is superb! so are the Alps. Yet am I Oberlanded, and must go lower to feel higher.
