s not a circumstance to
that Custom House. They only opened one of our things: a basket. But
when they met from within the intelligent gaze of _Woggs_, they all lay
down and died. Woggs is a fine dog....

God bless you! May coins fall into your coffee and the finest wines and
wittles lie smilingly about your path, with a kind of dissolving view of
fine scenery by way of background; and may all speak well of you--and me
too for that matter--and generally all things be ordered unto you
totally regardless of expense and with a view to nothing in the world
but enjoyment, edification, and a portly and honoured age.--Your dear
papa,

R. L. S.

TO A. G. DEW-SMITH

This, from the same place and about the same date, is addressed by
way of thanks to a friend at Cambridge, the late Mr. A. G. Dew-Smith,
who had sent him a present of a box of cigarettes. Mr. Dew-Smith, a
man of fine artistic tastes and mechanical genius, with a silken,
somewhat foreign, urbanity of bearing, was the original, so far as
concerns manner and way of speech, of Attwater in the _Ebb-Tide_.

[_Hotel Belvedere, Davos, November 1880_].

Figure me to yourself, I pray--
A man of my peculiar cut--
Apart from dancing and deray,[29]
Into an Alpine valley shut;

Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,
Discountenanced by God and man;
The food?--Sir, you would do as well
To cram your belly full of bran.

The company? Alas, the day
That I should dwell with such a crew,
With devil anything to say,
Nor any one to say it to!

The place? Although they call it Platz,
I will be bold and state my view;
It's not a place at all--and that's
The bottom verity, my Dew.

There are, as I will not deny,
Innumerable inns; a road;
Several Alps indifferent high;
The snow's inviolable abode;

Eleven English parsons, all
Entirely inoffensive; four
True human beings--what I call
Human--the deuce a cipher more;

A climate of surprising worth;
Innumerable dogs that bark;
Some air, some weather, and some earth;
A native race--God save the mark!--

A race that works, yet cannot work,
Yodels, but cannot yodel right,
Such as, unhelp'd, with rusty dirk,
I vow that I could wholly smite.

A river[30] that from morn to night
Down all the valley plays the fool;
Not once she pauses in her flight,
Nor knows the comfort of a pool;

B