“Well!” exclaimed Euphemia; “it seems to me, from all I hear, that we ought to take about twelve years to see Europe.  We should leave the United States every April, spend May in some one place, and go back in June.  And this we ought to do each year until we have seen all the places in May.  This might do very well for any one who had plenty of money, and who liked the ocean, but I don’t think we could stand it.  As for me,” she continued, “I would like to spend these months, so cold and disagreeable here, in the sunny lands of Southern France.  I want to see the vineyards and the olive groves, and the dark-eyed maidens singing in the fields.  I long for the soft skies of Provence, and to hear the musical dialect in which Frederic Mistral wrote his ‘Mireio.’”

“That sounds very well,” said Baxter, “but in all those southern countries you must be prepared in winter for the rigors of the climate.  The sun is pretty warm sometimes at this season, but as soon as you get out of it you will freeze to death if you are not careful.  The only way to keep warm is to be in the sun, out of the wind, and that won’t work on rainy days, and winter is the rainy season, you know.  In the houses it is as cold as ice, and the fires don’t amount to anything.  You might as well light a bundle of wooden tooth-picks and put it in the fire-place.  If you could sleep all the time you might be comfortable, for they give you a feather-bed to cover yourself with.  Outside you may do well enough if you keep up a steady walking, but indoors you will have hard work to keep warm.  You must wear chest-protectors.  They sell them down there—­great big ones, made of rabbit-skins; and a nice thing for a man to have to wear in the house is a pair of cloth bags lined with fur.  They would keep his feet and legs warm when he isn’t walking.  It is well, too, to have a pair of smaller fur bags for your hands when you are in the house.  You can have a little hole in the end of one of them through which you can stick a pen-holder, and then you can write letters.  An india-rubber bag, filled with hot water, to lower down your back, is a great comfort.  You haven’t any idea how cold your spine gets in those warm countries.  And, if I were you, I’d avoid a place where you see them carting coal stoves around.  Those are the worst spots.  And you need not expect to get one of the stoves, not while they can sell you wood at two sticks for a franc.  You had better go to some place where they are not accustomed to having tourists.  In the regular resorts they are afraid to make any show of keeping warm, for fear people will think they are in the habit of having cold weather.  And in Italy you’ve got to be precious careful, or you’ll be taken sick.  And another thing.  I suppose you brought a great deal of baggage with you.  You, for instance,” said our friend, turning to me, “packed up, I suppose, a heavy overcoat for cold weather, and a lighter one, and a good winter suit, and a good summer one, besides another for spring and fall, and an old suit to lie about in in the orange groves, and a dress suit, besides such convenient articles as old boots for tramping in, pocket-lanterns, and so forth.”