LS,--I am well but have a little over-tired myself which is
disgusting. This is a heathenish place near delightful places, but
inhabited, alas! by a wholly bestial crowd.

ON SOME GHOSTLY COMPANIONS AT A SPA

I had an evil day when I
To Strathpeffer drew anigh,
For there I found no human soul,
But Ogres occupied the whole.
They had at first a human air
In coats and flannel underwear.
They rose and walked upon their feet
And filled their bellies full of meat,
Then wiped their lips when they had done--
But they were ogres every one.
Each issuing from his secret bower
I marked them in the morning hour.
By limp and totter, list and droop,
I singled each one from the group.
Detected ogres, from my sight
Depart to your congenial night
From these fair vales: from this fair day
Fleet, spectres, on your downward way,
Like changing figures in a dream
To Muttonhole and Pittenweem!
Or, as by harmony divine
The devils quartered in the swine,
If any baser place exist
In God's great registration list--
Some den with wallow and a trough--
Find it, ye ogres, and be off!

Yours, R. L. S.

TO ISOBEL STRONG

Further letters from Scotland during these months are lacking. The
next was written, in answer to an inquiry from his stepdaughter at
San Francisco, on the second day after his arrival at Davos.

_Hotel Belvedere, Davos, November 1880._

No my che-ild--not Kamschatka this trip, only the top of the Alps, or
thereby; up in a little valley in a wilderness of snowy mountains; the
Rhine not far from us, quite a little highland river; eternal snow-peaks
on every hand. Yes; just this once I should like to go to the Vienna
gardens[28] with the family and hear Tweedledee and drink something and
see Germans--though God knows we have seen Germans enough this while
back. Naturally some in the Customs House on the Alsatian frontier, who
would have made one die from laughing in a theatre, and provoked a
smile from us even in that dismal juncture. To see them, big, blond,
sham-Englishmen, but with an unqualifiable air of not quite fighting the
sham through, diving into old women's bags and going into paroxysms of
arithmetic in white chalk, three or four of them (in full uniform) in
full cry upon a single sum, with their brows bent and a kind of
arithmetical agony upon their mugs. Madam, the diversion of
cock-fighting has been much commended, but it wa