two rival hotels. The fact that three varieties of fish were offered
at one, while only two were offered at the other, opened so animated a
discussion of quantity as opposed to probable quality that the listener
discretely withdrew.

A lady on the Florida express, after reading a novel all day with an
occasional interim, during which she gazed through her lorgnette with bored
and anxious air, finally said to her companion, "I have not seen a single
estate which compares to those in Brookline."

Among the varieties of needless worry imposed upon the traveler by the
insistent habit, none is more common, or more easily overcome, than the
refusal to sleep unless noise and light are quite shut out. If the sufferer
make of his insistent habit a servant, rather than a master, and instead of
reiterating "I must have quiet and darkness," will confidently assert, "I
must get over this nonsense," he will speedily learn that freedom from
resentment, and a good circulation of air, are more conducive to sleep than
either darkness or silence.

The best drug for the sleepless traveler is the _aequo animo_ of Cicero.






XIII.

THE WORRIER AT THE TABLE