Letter XLII

Dearest: I saw an old woman riding a horse astride: and I was convinced on
the spot that this is the rightest way of riding, and that the sidesaddle
was a foolish and affected invention. The horse was fine, and so was the
young man leading it: the old woman was upright and stately, with a wide
hat and full petticoats like a Maximilian soldier.

This was at Bozen, where we stayed for two nights, and from which I have
brought a cold with me: it seems such an English thing to have, that I
feel quite at home in the discomfort of it. It had been such wonderful
weather that we were sitting out of doors every evening up to 9.30 P.M.
without wraps, and on our heads only our "widows' caps." (The M.-A.
persists in a style which suggests that Uncle N. has gone to a better
world.) Mine was too flimsy a work of fiction, and a day before I had been
for a climb and got wet through, so a chill laid its benediction on my
head, and here I am,--not seriously incommoded by the malady, but by the
remedy, which is the M.-A. full of kind quackings and fierce tyranny if I
do but put my head out of window to admire the view, whose best is a
little round the corner.

I had no idea Innsbruck was so high up among the mountains: snows are on
the peaks all around. Behind the house-tops, so close and near, lies a
quarter circle of white crests. You are told that in winter creatures
come down and look in at the windows: sometimes they are called wolves,
sometimes bears--any way the feeling is mediæval.