Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/288

. 7, 1861.]

a boat on Brienz lake—then a lake of silver by reason of a large August moon—the cool evening of a hot day, flakes of silver sliding from the oars, rowlock noise and ripple, silver light alternating with deep black shade—in this boat on Brienz lake sat Charles Westby, Esquire, Barrister-at-law, and in the line of his eyes the sweetest half-length of a girlish figure, perfect outline dark against the molten silver of the lake.

Now, Charles Westby was intently considering what ought to be said and what ought not to be said in a certain matter, to wit, a Chancery suit in which he held a brief. This was an erroneous employment of time: firstly, because the subject on hand is the subject best worth thinking about, and the present occasion formed no exception to the rule; secondly, because an eminent member of the faculty had absorbed a guinea, shaken his head, and stated authoritatively—

“Mr. Westby, if you don’t give up all business thoughts for two months, at least, I won’t answer for the consequences.”

“And your prescription?” asked Mr. Westby, desiring something tangible in return for the absorbed guinea.

“Here it is, sir; it is so simple that you won’t require the intervention of a chemist.”

The prescription consisted of three English words—“Go to Switzerland.”

Mr. Westby did go to Switzerland, but the sanative property of the prescription did not lie in its letters. He coloured everything with equity that he saw in his route—Paris architecture, Louvre pictures, Strasbourg cathedral, the pleasant Vosges mountain range seen from the second-class on the Strasbourg and Basle Railway, the swift green Rhine shooting beneath the balcony of the “Trois Rois” at Basle, and the sunrise on the Rigi.