The Argosy — page 310: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

2G2 THE BATHS OF GASTEIN LOSELY shut in by mountains ; exposed only to the South winds, and these to a very modified degree; the air of Gastein was more than commonly trying and relaxing. But for the cold nights it would have been almost unbearable. After rain, too, the atmosphere would be refreshing : and rain fell almost daily. It was a positive luxury to sit out in one of the arbours, after a sharp shower, and note its effects. Then indeed, as the doctor termed it, you breathed the true mountain air; and had it been always thus, Gastein would more than have held its own in comparison with other European climates. But so great was the amount of evaporation, that in a few hours, eyen after long, heavy rain, all traces thereof would dis- appear, both from earth and atmosphere. If two days passed without it the place became intolerable ; and therefore, as Nature generally is true to herself, rainy days in Gastein were in the predominant. But they must not be compared with the rainy days in England, or thought to be as unpleasant. <A shower, perhaps, lasted an hour or two; then the clouds rolled away from the tops of the mountains, the sun shone forth, the blue sky made glad the heart of man, and in avery little time you could not tell that rain had fallen. One week’s incessant downpour we certainly had, but it was a grand exception. And dull enough and dreary the exception proved. Every- body looked blue and disconsolate. ‘The band took permanent refuge in the wandelbahn, and thundered out Strauss’s waltzes, varied by operatic selections. The visitors walked up and down the long room as if their lives depended upon exercise, until the very boards creaked under the weight of the burden. One old lady was wont to turn out in a kind of military cloak, and a nightcap surmounted by an enormous brown hat. She had been to the waters of Carlsbad, for liver or lungs, or the derangement of some other internal organ, and was finishing up with Gastein. In this guise she one day fastened herself upon me, no doubt mistaking an astonished gaze for one of fascination ; and she chattered away, now in German, now in broken English, until the efforts of her victim to preserve gravity were becoming painful. Luckily the doctor came in at the mght moment, and released me from the humi- liation of an outburst. After this I was prepared for her, and on further acquaintance she proved as good and kindly natured as she appeared eccentric. It was certainly a dreadfully wet week, and at the end of-five days —_) people began to ask each other whether it would ever cease. Thented ..