Without a courier, a wife, heavy baggage, or young ladies, I enter too, and dare to order a cutlet and potatoes. After half-an-hour two chops come and spinach, each just one bite, and cold. I ask for fruit, and some pears are presented that grate on the knife, with a minute bunch of grapes, good ones let us acknowledge. For this we pay 2_s._ Next day I row three miles down the lake, and order, just as before, a cutlet, potatoes, and fruit, but this time at a second-rate German inn. Presently behold two luscious veal cutlets, with splendid potatoes, and famous hot plates; and a fruit-basket teeming gracefully with large clusters of magnificent grapes, peaches, pears all gushing with juice, and mellow apples, and rosy plums. For this I pay 1_s._ 6_d._ The secret is that the Germans won't pay the prices which the English fear to grumble at, and won't put up with the articles the English fear to refuse. Nor may we blame the hotel-keepers for their part in this business. They try to make as much money as they can, and most people who are making money try to do the same. In the twilight the Rob Roy launched on the Lake of Zurich, so lovely by evening, cool and calm, with its pretty villages painted again on the water below, and soft voices singing, and slow music floating in the air, as the moon looked down, and the crests of snow were silvered on far-off hills. The canoe was now put up in a boathouse where all seemed to be secure. It was the only time I had found a boathouse for my boat, and the only time when she was badly treated; for, next morning, though the man in charge appeared to be a solid, honest fellow, I saw at once that the canoe had been sadly tumbled about and filled with water, the seat cast off and floating outside, the covering deranged, the sails untied, and the sacred paddle defiled by clumsy hands. The man who suffered this to be perpetrated will not soon forget the Anglo-German-French set-down he received (with a half-franc), and I shall not forget in future to observe the time-honoured practice of carrying the canoe invariably into the hotel. Another piece of experience gained here was this, that to send your luggage on by a steamer, intending to regain it on your arrival, adds far less of convenience than it does of anxiety and trouble, seeing that in this sort of travel you can readily take the baggage with you always and everywhere in your boat.