gan to thaw and for an
hour or so we had a lively time. In the course of a battle with a pipe
and a monkey wrench I sprained a thumb, and the next morning I stopped
at the drugstore on my way to the train to get some iodine.

Rhubarb was at his prescription counter weighing a little cone of white
powder in his apothecary's scales. He looked far from well. There were
great pouches under his eyes; his beard was unkempt; his waistcoat
spotted with food stains. The lady waiting received her package, and
went out. Rhubarb and I grasped hands.

"Well," I said, "what do you think now about the war? Did you see that
the Canadians took a mile of trenches five hundred yards deep last week?
Do you still think Germany will win?" To my surprise he turned on his
heel and began apparently rummaging along a row of glass jars. His gaze
seemed to be fastened upon a tall bottle containing ethyl alcohol. At
last he turned round. His broad, naive face was quivering like
blanc-mange.

"What do I care who wins?" he said. "What does it matter to me any more?
Minna is dead. She died two weeks ago of pneumonia."

As I stood, not knowing what to say, there was a patter along the floor.
The little dachshund came scampering into the shop and frisked about my
feet.

THE HAUNTING BEAUTY OF STRYCHNINE

A LITTLE-KNOWN TOWN OF UNEARTHLY BEAUTY

Slowly, reluctantly (rather like a _vers libre_ poem) the quaint
little train comes to a stand. Along the station platform each of the
_fiacre_ drivers seizes a large dinner-bell and tries to outring the
others. You step from the railway carriage--and instantly the hellish
din of those droschky bells faints into a dim, far-away tolling. Your
eye has caught the superb sweep of the Casa Grande beetling on its crag.
Over the sapphire canal where the old men are fishing for sprats, above
the rugged scarp where the blue-bloused _ouvriers_ are quarrying the
famous champagne cheese, you see the Gothic transept of the Palazzio
Ginricci, dour against a nacre sky. An involuntary tremolo eddies down
your spinal marrow. The Gin Palace, you murmur.... At last you are in
Strychnine.

Unnoted by Baedeker, unsung by poets, unrhapsodied by press
agents--there lurks the little town of Strychnine in that far and
untravelled corner where France, Russia, and Liberia meet in an
unedifying Zollverein. The strychnine baths have long been famous among
physicians, but the usual ruddy tourist knows them not. The sorrowf