The bedrooms are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of
varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf
of books of a particular and dippable order, such as Pepys, the
Paston Letters, Burt's Letters from the Highlands, or the Newgate
Calendar. . . .
CHAPTER IX--DAVOS IN WINTER
A mountain valley has, at the best, a certain prison-like effect on
the imagination, but a mountain valley, an Alpine winter, and an
invalid's weakness make up among them a prison of the most
effective kind. The roads indeed are cleared, and at least one
footpath dodging up the hill; but to these the health-seeker is
rigidly confined. There are for him no cross-cuts over the field,
no following of streams, no unguided rambles in the wood. His
walks are cut and dry. In five or six different directions he can
push as far, and no farther, than his strength permits; never
deviating from the line laid down for him and beholding at each
repetition the same field of wood and snow from the same corner of
the road. This, of itself, would be a little trying to the
patience in the course of months; but to this is added, by the
heaped mantle of the snow, an almost utter absence of detail and an
almost unbroken identity of colour. Snow, it is true, is not
merely white. The sun touches it with roseate and golden lights.
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