The gain is futile and the world is small That can be bought by barter of the soul, A new time dawns and gleaming portents call For fresh means, changed ideals, altered goal. VI WINTER The attraction of the Alpine winter, which till lately was a pious cult of the elect, has become a common-place of advertisements and agencies. Every year a larger crowd gathers in what used to be considered frost-bound solitudes, and some new resort is opened for the Christmas holiday-maker. Among such resorts the Engadine, with its dry air, clear sky, and brilliant sunshine, takes a foremost place. At no {58} time is it more lovely and enjoyable, more unlike the surroundings we have left at home, more recuperative to jaded denizens of the town. It would be difficult to find a gayer and busier scene than its frozen lakes and snow-clad slopes present in winter. Even the work that goes on partakes of the general exhilaration. Sleighs and toboggans replace carts and barrows, lightening the labour of man and beast, and adding a novel animation to transport and locomotion. Bound and buried though Nature be, the work of those who deal with her is by no means at a stand-still; the universal snow, instead of staying it, inaugurates a general transport system, converting rough mountain roads into smooth and facile descents; little more than guidance and gravitation is needed to bring the hay mown in summer and the timber felled in autumn from the distant uplands to the villages and homesteads where they should be. Nothing is more enjoyable than to take a passage down on a sleigh laden with hay or faggots, to rush through the keen air over glistening slopes, or along winding forest ways, or in the trough of steep gullies that centuries of similar traffic have cut through copse and wood; most admirable is the adroitness with which a practised mountaineer pilots his wayward and unwieldy craft, which, if once it 'take charge,' runs a mad career as fatal to its crew as to wayfarers in its path. Sports are organized in the most business-like {59} manner, and are as cosmopolitan as the human crowd; northern and mountain lands in all quarters of the globe have contributed to them, and when the short sunny day is over, keen brilliant nights, carnival balls on the illuminated lakes, theatricals, dancing, and unlimited miscellaneous fooling prolong the strenuous enjoyment.