Meantime in the English hotels home-
played farces, TABLEAUX-VIVANTS, and even balls enliven the evenings;
a charity 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.
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