Here, There and Everywhere | Page 2

Families"--An instructive game--Bermuda--A waterless island--A most inviting archipelago--Bermuda the most northern coral-atoll--The reefs and their polychrome fish--A "water-glass"--Sea-gardens--An ideal sailing-place--How the Guardsman won his race--A miniature Parliament--Unfounded aspersions on the Bermudians--Red and blue birds--Two pardonable mistakes--Soldier gardeners--Officers' wives--The little roaming home-makers--A pleasant island--The inquisitive German naval officers--"The Song of the Bermudians"

CHAPTER VIII
The demerits of the West Indies classified--The utter ruin of St. Pierre--The Empress Josephine--A transplanted brogue--Vampires--Lost in a virgin forest--Dictator-Presidents, Castro and Rosas--The mentality of a South American--"The Liberator"--The Basques and their national game--Love of English people for foreign words--Yellow fever--Life on an Argentina _estancia_--How cattle are worked--The lasso and the "bolas"--Ostriches--Venomous toads--The youthful rough-rider--His methods--Fuel difficulties--The vast plains--The wonderful bird-life

CHAPTER IX
Difficulties of an Argentine railway engineer--Why Argentina has the Irish gauge--A sudden contrast--A more violent contrast--Names and their obligations--Cape Town--The thoroughness of the Dutch pioneers--A dry and thirsty land--The beautiful Dutch Colonial houses --The Huguenot refugees--The Rhodes fruit-farms--Surf-riding--Groote Schuur--General Botha--The Rhodes Memorial--The episode of the sick boy--A visit from Father Neptune--What pluck will do

CHAPTER X
In France at the outbreak of the war--The _tocsin_--The "voice of the bell" at Harrow--Canon Simpson's theory about bells--His "five-tone" principle--Myself as a London policeman--Experiences with a celebrated Church choir--The "Grill-room Club"--Famous members --Arthur Cecil--Some neat answers--Sir Leslie Ward--Beerbohm Tree and the vain old member--Amateur supers--Juvenile disillusionment--The Knight--The Baron--Age of romance passed

CHAPTER XI
Dislike of the elderly to change--Some legitimate grounds of complaint--Modern pronunciation of Latin--How a European crisis was averted by the old-fashioned method--Lord Dufferin's Latin speech--Schoolboy costume of a hundred years ago--Discomforts of travel in my youth--A crack liner of the 'eighties--Old travelling carriages--An election incident--Headlong rush of extraordinary turn-out--The politically-minded signalman and the doubtful voter--"Decent bodies"--Confidence in the future--Conclusion
INDEX

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

CHAPTER I
An ideal form of travel for the elderly--A claim to roam at will in print--An invitation to a big-game shoot--Details of journey to Cooch Behar--The commercial magnate and the station-master--An outbreak of cholera--Arrival at Cooch Behar Palace--Our Australian Jehu--The Shooting Camp--Its gigantic scale--The daily routine--"Chota Begum," my confidential elephant--Her well-meant attentions--My first tiger--Another lucky shot--The leopard and the orchestra--The Maharanee of Cooch Behar--An evening in the jungle--The buns and the bear--Jungle pictures--A charging rhinoceros--Another rhinoceros incident--The amateur mahouts--Circumstances preventing a second visit to Cooch Behar.
The drawbacks of advancing years are so painfully obvious to those who have to shoulder the burden of a long tale of summers, that there is no need to enlarge upon them.
The elderly have one compensation, however; they have well-filled store-houses of reminiscences, chests of memories which are the resting-place of so many recollections that their owner can at will re-travel in one second as much of the surface of this globe as it has been his good fortune to visit, and this, too, under the most comfortable conditions imaginable.
Not for him the rattle of the wheels of the train as they grind the interminable miles away; not for him the insistent thump of the engines as they relentlessly drive the great liner through angry Atlantic surges to her far-off destination in smiling Southern seas. The muffled echoes of London traffic, filtering through the drawn curtains, are undisturbed by such grossly material reminders of modern engineering triumphs, for the elderly traveller journeys in a comfortable easy-chair before a glowing fire, a cigar in his mouth, and a long tumbler conveniently accessible to his hand.
The street outside is shrouded in November fog; under the steady drizzle, the dripping pavements reflect with clammy insistence the flickering gas-lamps, and everything, as Mr. Mantalini would have put it, "is demnition moist and unpleasant," whilst a few feet away, a grey-haired traveller is basking in the hot sunshine of a white coral strand, with the cocoa-nut palms overhead whispering their endless secrets to each other as they toss their emerald-green fronds in the strong Trade winds, the little blue wavelets of the Caribbean Sea lap-lapping as they pretend to break on the gleaming milk-white beach.
It is really an ideal form of travel! No discomforts, no hurryings to catch connections, no passports required, no passage money, and no hotel bills! What more could any one ask? The journeys can be varied indefinitely, provided that the owner of the storehouse has been careful to keep its shelves tidily arranged. India? The second shelf on the left. South Africa? The one immediately below it. Canada? South America? The West Indies? There they all are, each one in its proper place!
This private Thomas Cook & Son's office has the further advantage of being eminently portable. Wherever its owner goes, it goes, too. For the elderly this seems the most practical form of Travel Bureau, and it is incontestably the most economical one in these days when prices soar sky-high.
There is so much to see in this world of ours, and just one short lifetime in which to see it! I am fully conscious of the