The SQUIRE stayed here only a morning, passing on to other scenes. I watched his departure with mingled feelings; sorrow at losing a delightful companion, and apprehension of what might happen if he were to remain here to go through the full cure. The place is, as SARK says, the most brimstony on the same level. You breathe brimstone, drink it, bathe in it, and take it in at the pores. At the end of three weeks or a month you are dangerously saturated with the chemical. An ordinary lucifer match is nothing to a full-bodied patient at the end of three weeks treatment at Aix-la-Chapelle. If the SQUIRE had stayed on, I should never have seen his towering frame pass underneath a doorway without my heart leaping to my mouth. Some day he would have accidentally struck his head against the lintel and would have ignited as sure as a gun. If CHARLEMAGNE were now alive, I feel certain from what I know of him, he would have exhausted the resources of civilisation in search of a preventive of this ever-present and dangerous risk. Under CAROLO MAGNO the patient might have gone about the streets of Aix-la-Chapelle with sweet carelessness, knowing that, however much brimstone he carried, he would strike only on the box. * * * * * [Illustration: OUR COMPATRIOTS ABROAD. "AND HOW DID YOU LIKE SWITZERLAND?" "OH, IMMENSELY! IT WAS OUR FIRST VISIT, YOU KNOW!" "AND DID YOU GO ON INTO ITALY?" "WELL, NO. WE FOUND A HOTEL AT LAUSANNE WHERE THERE WAS A FIRST-RATE TENNIS-LAWN, YOU KNOW--QUITE AS GOOD AS OURS AT HOME. SO WE SPENT THE WHOLE OF OUR HOLIDAY THERE, AND PLAYED LAWN-TENNIS ALL DAY LONG!"] * * * * * FAMILY TIES. ["The journal (the _Grashdanin_) is of opinion that in making common cause with the other European Powers against China, Russia would but serve the ends of ... England to the prejudice of her own interests, which demand that she should not jeopardise the security of her Asiatic shores, or contribute to the complete ascendancy of Great Britain in the Pacific Ocean, by arousing the antagonism of China."--_Times_.] _Muscovite loquitur_:-- "Won't you help me bind the Dragon?" says the Briton to the Russ. Oho! ingenuous JOHNNY! I'm opposed to needless fuss, And have other fish to fry--say near the Oxus! Not a hang Do I care for what may happen on the great Yang-tse-Kiang. I approve Non-intervention. 'Tis your favourite doctrine, JOHN, And you stick to it _so_ closely, and that's just why you get on. If you think that Dragon's dangerous--I hold 'tis but his play!-- There's but one thing you've got to do--clear out of the brute's way. I am sure he doesn't want you where you've stayed a deal too long; He wishes you would up and go to--well _not_ to Hong-Kong, But the natural home of all such "Foreign Devils," in _his_ view. Why, he's none too sweet on Me, JOHN; is it likely he'd like _you_?