outside England at all.  I should say:

“I have smoked my fourpenny shag in the sanded bars of Fleet Street, and I have puffed my twopenny Manilla in the gilded balls of the Criterion; I have quaffed my foaming beer of Burton where Islington’s famed Angel gathers the little thirsty ones beneath her shadowing wings, and I have sipped my tenpenny ordinaire in many a garlic-scented salon of Soho.  On the back of the strangely-moving ass I have urged—or, to speak more correctly, the proprietor of the ass, or his agent, from behind has urged—my wild career across the sandy heaths of Hampstead, and my canoe has startled the screaming wild-fowl from their lonely haunts amid the sub-tropical regions of Battersea.  Adown the long, steep slope of One Tree Hill have I rolled from top to foot, while laughing maidens of the East stood round and clapped their hands and yelled; and, in the old-world garden of that pleasant Court, where played the fair-haired children of the ill-starred Stuarts, have I wandered long through many paths, my arm entwined about the waist of one of Eve’s sweet daughters, while her mother raged around indignantly on the other side of the hedge, and never seemed to get any nearer to us.  I have chased the lodging-house Norfolk Howard to his watery death by the pale lamp’s light; I have, shivering, followed the leaping flea o’er many a mile of pillow and sheet, by the great Atlantic’s margin.  Round and round, till the heart—and not only the heart—grows sick, and the mad brain whirls and reels, have I ridden the small, but extremely hard, horse, that may, for a penny, be mounted amid the plains of Peckham Rye; and high above the heads of the giddy throngs of Barnet (though it is doubtful if anyone among them was half so giddy as was I) have I swung in highly-coloured car, worked by a man with a rope.  I have trod in stately measure the floor of Kensington’s Town Hall (the tickets were a guinea each, and included refreshments—when you could get to them through the crowd), and on the green sward of the forest that borders eastern Anglia by the oft-sung town of Epping I have performed quaint ceremonies in a ring; I have mingled with the teeming hordes of Drury Lane on Boxing Night, and, during the run of a high-class piece, I have sat in lonely grandeur in the front row of the gallery, and wished that I had spent my shilling instead in the Oriental halls of the Alhambra.”

“There you are,” said B., “that is just as good as yours; and you can write like that without going more than a few hours’ journey from London.”

“We will discuss the matter no further,” I replied.  “You cannot, I see, enter into my feelings.  The wild heart of the traveller does not throb within your breast; you cannot understand his longings.  No matter!  Suffice it that I will come this journey with you.  I will buy a German conversation book, and a check-suit, and a blue veil, and a white umbrella, and suchlike necessities of the English tourist in Germany, this very afternoon.  When do you start?”

“Well,” he said, “it is a good two days’ journey.  I propose to start on Friday.”

“Is not Friday rather an unlucky day to start on?” I suggested.

“Oh, good gracious!” he retorted quite sharply, “what rubbish next?  As if the affairs of Europe were going to be arranged by Providence according to whether you and I start for an excursion on a Thursday or a Friday!”

He said he was surprised that a man who could be so sensible, occasionally, as myself, could have patience to even think of such old-womanish nonsense.  He said that years ago, when he was a silly boy, he used to pay attention to this foolish superstition himself, and would never upon any consideration start for a trip upon a Friday.

But, one year, he was compelled to do so.  It was a case of either starting on a Friday or not going at all, and he determined to chance it.

He went, prepared for and expecting a series of accidents and misfortunes.  To return home alive was the only bit of pleasure he hoped for from that trip.

As it turned out, however, he had never had a more enjoyable holiday in his life before.  The whole event was a tremendous success.

And after that, he had made up his mind to always start on a Friday; and he always did, and always had a good time.

He said that he would never, upon any consideration, start for a trip upon any other day but a Friday now.  It was so absurd, this superstition about Friday.

So we agreed to start on the Friday, and I am to meet him at Victoria Station at a quarter to eight in the evening.

THURSDAY, 22ND

The Question of Luggage.—First Friend’s Suggestion.—Second Friend’s Suggestion.—Third Friend’s Suggestion.—Mrs. Briggs’ Advice.—Our Vicar’s Advice.—His Wife’s Advice.—Medical Advice.—Literary Advice.—George’s Recommendation.—My Sister-in-Law’s Help.—Young Smith’s Counsel.—My Own Ideas.—B.’s Idea.

I have been a good deal worried to-day about the question of what luggage to take with me.  I met a man this morning, and he said:

“Oh, if you are going to Ober-Ammergau, mind you take plenty of warm clothing with you.  You’ll need all your winter things up there.”

He said that a friend of his had gone up there some years ago, and had not taken enough warm things with him, and had caught a chill there, and had come home and died.  He said:

“You be guided by me, and take plenty of warm things with you.”

I met another man later on, and he said:

“I hear you are going abroad.  Now, tell me, what part of Europe are you going to?”

I replied that I thought it was somewhere about the middle.  He said:

“Well, now, you take my advice, and get a calico suit and a sunshade.  Never mind the look of the thing.  You be comfortable.  You’ve no idea of the heat on the Continent at this time of the year.  English people will persist in travelling about the Continent in the same stuffy clothes that they wear at home.  That’s how so many of them get sunstrokes, and are ruined for life.”

I went into the club, and there I met a friend of mine—a newspaper correspondent—who has travelled a good deal, and knows Europe pretty well.  I told him what my two other friends had said, and asked him which I was to believe.  He said:

“Well, as a matter of fact, they are both right.  You see, up in those hilly districts, the weather changes very quickly.  In the morning it may be blazing hot, and you will be melting, and in the evening you may be very glad of a flannel shirt and a fur coat.”

“Why, that is exactly the sort of weather we have in England!” I exclaimed.  “If that’s all these foreigners can manage in their own country, what right have they to come over here, as they do, and grumble about our weather?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” he replied, “they haven’t any right; but you can’t stop them—they will do it.  No, you take my advice, and be prepared for everything.  Take a cool suit and some thin things, for if it’s hot, and plenty of warm things in case it is cold.”

When I got home I found Mrs. Briggs there, she having looked in to see how the baby was.  She said:—

“Oh! if you’re going anywhere near Germany, you take a bit of soap with you.”

She said that Mr. Briggs had been called over to Germany once in a hurry, on business, and had forgotten to take a piece of soap with him, and didn’t know enough German to ask for any when he got over there, and didn’t see any to ask for even if he had known, and was away for three weeks, and wasn’t able to wash himself all the time, and came home so dirty that they didn’t know him, and mistook him for the man that was to come to see what was the matter with the kitchen boiler.

Mrs. Briggs also advised me to take some towels with me, as they give you such small towels to wipe on.

I went