Since I last wrote I have been playing truant for a week at Ven! Jand more than ever T feel that, spring and autumn at least, no place can vie with the Isle of Wight for tranquil old-world charm. Cowes is rather an exception. It seems mot str ously incongruous with the Island's jeharacter that Cowes should " have become an important centre for the building of men-of-war and battleplanes. 'Yet so it is, the banks of the Medina River continually echoing to the clang of hammers and the aero engine's roar. Shanklin and Sandown, too, are' merely great holiday camps, hardly yet awakening, from their winter sleep. At Sandown We toiled along three-quarters of mile of esplanade before we found a tea-shop open. It advertised "Home made cakes" as a speciality. But 1 have long discovered. that fessional brand is a safer Elsewhere the Istand has suffered Dut little, and at Ventnor in partie cular one is back in the unrulied calm of the great Exhibition of 1851 with, however, all modern conv fences. Indeed our hotel was one of the most comfortable and best run I have ever been in, possibly because W has the perfect head waiter, who thas been there for 20 years and holds the management (and guests) in the hollow of his kindly "and. capable hands. 'The only people with wher he could not cope were three charming old ladies, the youngest of whom, certainly well over 69, drove their car up and down break-neck hills at a pace which made. the islanders' blood run cold. But you cannot kill these old ladies, who are letting loose nowadays with all the greater exuberance for the restrictions of their youth, We bought season tickets on the railway (eight shillings for "seven Jdays, go where, when and as often as you please) because Thomas, the Cairn puppy, despises the whol breed of motor ears, which make hi sick. But anyway the motor buses Father bang you about and the trains will yet you anywhere you. want most "comfortably, except between riks's pony is the onl means of progression. There i= cone little train in particular, between
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.