"And this is the room of his daughter KOONG-SEE, Who's shut up, as she's found in the first scene to be, Whence she looks on the gardens and looks on the trees, That wibbledy wobbledy go in the breeze, Whose verdure and shade such a paradise made Of the house of the Mandarin HEE-SING."
All which description can be adapted to present circumstances, and be applied to the interior and exterior of the Royal Hot-and-Cold-Bath Hotel, Pinemouth, where the fare is excellent, and the price moderate; and, if there are, here and there, in the three hundred and sixty-five days some bad ones, what of that? Is there any establishment, however perfect, which, open all the year round, is not open to cavil and also to improvement?
_Trip to Lulworth Cove._--By new L. and S. W. line. This line, like the stitch in time, saves nine, or it saves at least seven miles formerly traversed in prehistoric times of quite six months ago. We are _en route_ for Lulworth. Soothing name Lulworth! Drowsy murmur of a Sleepy-Hollow sort drones about the name of Lulworth.
Delightful drive of five or six miles from station to Lulworth Cove. Expect of course to be received by "The Cove" himself in person. As the road thither is occasionally steep, stout persons are requested to get out and walk up the hills, which they do with as good a grace as is possible under the circumstances on a broiling September mid-day.
In our shandradan there is a modern version of Miss BIFFIN, who can't possibly walk, but not for the physical reasons which prevented the above-mentioned "abbreviated form" from pedestrianising; and there is also with us the usual genial, stout, elderly dissembler, who, affecting to be troubled with a touch of highly respectable gout, feigns the deepest regret at being unable to descend from the car and join the pedestrians in their delightful toil up the hard and stony hill. At the summit we are refreshed by a gentle breeze, and between the heights, about three miles distant, obtaining a view of the deep blue sea, we feel invigorated.
"_Thalatta! Thalatta!_" exclaims a youth of our party, who is home for the holidays. No one understands him except the stout man with the gout, who smiles approvingly, and asks the lad some recondite question concerning XENOPHON and the Anabasis, whereat the schoolboy shakes his head, and murmurs something about "not having got quite so far as that." No schoolboy home for the holidays ever has got as far as the question you put to him. All our schoolboy knows has been exhausted in that one quotation, and perhaps the stout gentleman with the touch of gout is not sorry that the boy's knowledge of Greek is limited. It is a venturesome thing for a man over fifty, who has not "kept up his classics," to tackle a boy fresh from school.