harity bazaar sheds genial consternation;
Christmas and New Year are solemnised with Pantagruelian dinners, and
from time to time the young folks carol and revolve untunefully enough
through the figures of a singing quadrille. A magazine club supplies you
with everything, from the _Quarterly_ to the _Sunday at Home_. Grand
tournaments are organised at chess, draughts, billiards, and whist. Once
and again wandering artists drop into our mountain valley, coming you
know not whence, going you cannot imagine whither, and belonging to
every degree in the hierarchy of musical art, from the recognised
performer who announces a concert for the evening, to the comic German
family or solitary long-haired German baritone, who surprises the guests
at dinner-time with songs and a collection. They are all of them good to
see; they, at least, are moving; they bring with them the sentiment of
the open road; yesterday, perhaps, they were in Tyrol, and next week
they will be far in Lombardy, while all we sick folk still simmer in our
mountain prison. Some of them, too, are welcome as the flowers in May
for their own sake; some of them may have a human voice; some may have
that magic which transforms a wooden box into a song-bird, and what we
jeeringly call a fiddle into what we mention with respect as a violin.
From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence,
accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely
a difference rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of
singing that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch of the
true virtuoso. Even that you may perhaps enjoy; and if you do so you
will own it impossible to enjoy it more keenly than here, _im Schnee der
Alpen_. A hyacinth in a pot, a handful of primroses packed in moss, or a
piece of music by some one who knows the way to the heart of a violin,
are things that, in this invariable sameness of the snows and frosty
air, surprise you like an adventure. It is droll, moreover, to compare
the respect with which the invalids attend a concert, and the ready
contempt with which they greet the dinner-time performers. Singing which
they would hear with real enthusiasm--possibly with tears--from a corner
of a drawing-room, is listened to with laughter when it is offered by an
unknown professional and no money has been taken at the door.

Of skating little need be said; in so snowy a climate the rinks must be
intelligently managed