The Argosy — page 61: what you’re looking at

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

5I FROM LONDON TO SALZBURG. “ HE brain wants a holiday,” said the learned doctor I had con — sulted. ‘ You cannot do better than go over to Gastein for three months. Or, if you would prefer it, take g trip to Alexandna and back in a P. and O. steamer.” This was no doubt good advice; but to leave work behind me for so long a time seemed about as possible as to undertake a journey to the moon, or the conversion of the South-Sea Islanders. Still it has been said of old time that when there’s a will there’s a way: and though this proverb should of nght belong to the gentler sex to whom it is certainly more applicable: it was not so very long after the advice had been given, that by a train of circumstances favourable to the project, I was enabled to put it into execution. So it happened that one morning I found myself, with a companion, on the point of starting from home and work, from familiar scenes and faces, and well-known haunts, into an uncertain fate and future. Good-byes were over. Those good-byes that are always sad in this world, becausea type of that last look, that last handshake, that last twining of the arms that comes to each at the closing scene of all. At such times the still small voice is wont to make itself heard above the rattle of carriages and the roar of trains, as we wonder whether it is recorded of us that we shall again look upon those loved faces from which we have just parted. But after all there is something exhilarating in rapidity of motion: a sense of pleasure and of power in being whirled away at the rate of fifty miles an hour: which scatters from the mind all those dull vapours that affect the heart : and so, whether we will or not, we yield ourselves up to the pure enjoyment of the hour: the sunshine and the quick- changing scene. On starting from Charing Cross the sky was gray and cold. In less than half an hour the clouds had rolled away, and we were in the full glory of an early spring morning at the beginning of May, 1870. | On nearing Dover, many anxious faces were thrust out of various compartments for a glimpse of the sea, which happily was calm, blue, and unruffled as a lake. Not the shade of a ripple, not the ghost of a swell, could be conjured up by the liveliest imagination. A general murmur of approbation like the humming of bees ; an access of colour to cheeks that had grown pale and paler yet; an increased interest in sundry packets of sandwiches, that is so English and so unpleasant ; and we steamed on to the harbour. After many inquiries, which resulted in as many differences of opinion: OL (GO)