"Give him another month here, and he'll be giving you all the slip, and walking back to Calais on foot." Young JERRYMAN is commenting on the wonderful restoration that has taken place in the condition of the Dilapidated One, who has just been detected having a row on the lake, all by himself. Not that this is a very prodigious aquatic feat, seeing that three or four good strokes either way take you either into the bank, or on to the heels or tails of a couple of very ill-tempered, and irascible swans, who appear to think, and with some reason, that there's not too much waterway as it is, and resent the intrusion of the boat on their domain as a ridiculous superfluity. However, the effort is one that the Dilapidated One would not have ventured on at his arrival a month since, and as our time is up, and we are starting on our return journey home in about half-an-hour's time, we hail it as an indication that if he has not quite obtained the Perfect Cure, that his medical man promised him, as the result of a trip to this delightful spot, he is certainly not far off it.
But the best things must come to an end, and so we find ourselves at length, with much regret, taking our farewell of that excellent and capitally-conducted "Perfect Kurhaus" the Hôtel Titlis. And this reminds me, that in justice to that establishment, I ought to state that some comments I made last week on German feeding in general, in no way were meant to refer to the table d'hôte at the Hôtel Titlis, which, served in a lofty and well-ventilated salon, lighted by electricity, to four hundred people daily, a capitally well-appointed meal, is one of the notable features of the place. The smoke-stifled children of the Fatherland, who shut every window they come across when they get a chance, though they would dearly like to, cannot carry their tricks on here. Sometimes, but not very often, they rally in force, and render the "Grosser Gesellschafts Saal" a sort of Tophet to the ordinary Briton; but the "Speise Saal", where smoking is "verboten," is happily beyond their reach. But the hour of departure has come, and quitting his comfortable establishment with much regret, we bid good-bye to the courteous Herr CATTANI, and with a crack of the whip we are off, dashing down the valley, and leaving Engelberg up on its heights as a pleasant dream behind us.
And what is Engelberg? There is, first and foremost, par excellence, the feature of the place—the Hôtel Titlis; then the Monastery, with the Brethren of the Bell-rope; and the Street. This is unique. Set out with a Châlet here, a Swiss Pension there, a Chapel perched up on a little hill on one side, and a neatly new-made farmhouse stuck up on the other, with cattle (not omitting their dinner-bells) dotted about here and there in the bright green meadows that creep up to, and melt into, the pine-woods stretching from the base of the grand rugged snow-capped heights that tower in every direction above, you get thoroughly impressed with the idea that the whole place is nothing but a box of toys, set out for the season (probably by the Monks), who, you feel convinced, are only waiting for the departure of the last visitor, to get out the box, and carefully pack away Châlet, and Pension, Chapel and peasant for the winter months, with a view to keeping them fresh for production in the early summer of next year.
However, whatever its fate, Engelberg is left behind us, and we find ourselves tearing down the Practical Joking Engineers' Road at a break-neck pace, and hurrying on to Calais, once more to take our places on our steady old friend, the Calais-Douvres, that helps to deposit us finally at Charing Cross, where we are bound to admit that the air, whatever it is, is emphatically not the air of Engelberg. But everybody who has seen him, says the Dilapidated One has come back "twice the man he was". So we must take it that our journey has not been in vain.
ADDITIONAL TITLE.—Sir EDWIN ARNOLD, after his brilliant letters in the D.T., worthy of The Light of the World, will be remembered in Japan as a "first-rate sort of Jap."
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
