THE Grotta Giusti of Monsummano is a resort known to few Britons and Americans other than those resident in Italy. The rheumatic of other nationalities-French, Danish, Swedish, Austrian, Polish-disdaining the facilities nearer to their hand, meet at Monsummano, lured thither, it may be, by that distance which lends enchantment as well to baths as to views. Germans overran the place before the war, but not now; Italians, in common with most other peoples of Europe, turn a cold shoulder upon the German. Until the present scribe was urged thither by a Siena doctor he had never heard of the Grotto Giusti; and lest any who read are in like case, be it said Monsummano is but two hours from Florence on the line to Viareggio. It is called a "bath," but this does not properly describe it. Better adopt the term of that Siena doctor and call it a "sudatorio," which is unlovely but correct: most correct. It is a "sweating place."

The Grotto is a cavern in the hillside, such a cavern as occurs in limestone in any country; with the difference that it is hot with the heat of waters which from the bowels of the earth rise in the likeness of rude wells. The roof suggests fossilised sponge, and the sur

roundings were as volcanic action and damp had made them until man laid cement path, built up chasm, bridged, and erected hand-rail, and cut away stalactite for the passage of those not exceeding five feet six. New arrivals of taller growth, feeling tenderly their skulls, wish they had cut away a little more; for, electric light notwithstanding, the roof abounds in booby-traps for the unwary and half-awake. Early morning is not the time to make acquaintance with strange caverns.

The place grows hotter as you go farther in; at the section labelled Purgatoriothey never fail to apply Dante in Italy-the temperature may be sixty-five. In the natural chamber, shapeless as hole in loaf, at the extreme end, a hundred and eighty metres from the entrance, the thermometer marks a steady 33° C., say 91° F. This is the Inferno. It owes its superior attractions to the pit below-a pit hid from fearsome eyes by the wooden grating which makes the floor of half its area. This is where we, the patients, clad in white drill gown or pyjamas supplied by the management, sit and perspire. It is furnished with garden seats, footstools, and a kitchen clock. Here we sit round and contemplate one another and the clock. All required of us is

very thoroughly.

The Grotto opens at eight, and for an hour is reserved to us who are guests at the hotel, which has been built against the hillside annexe, as it were, to the cavern, with which it communicates by tunnel or passage that we need not go out of doors. After nine come the visitors from without even from Pistoia, where they have no baths; and from Montecatini, across the vale, where they have, but prefer the Grotto. In summer, which is the season, two hundred patients daily spend the prescribed hour in Inferno.

Quietude, born of the somnolence which is excusable in people just out of bed, prevails at first; then neighbours, discovering a language in common, exchange courtesies in undertones. Anon one speaks of symptoms: common ground has been reached; tongues are loosed, voices rise, the owners growing eager and descriptive. Others, breathing the thick air, punctuate thought with glances at the clock, and sigh at intervals. We cannot read-the vapour obscures one's glasses nor play Patience: the drip from above would spoil the cards. We can only sit and do that for which we are here. I drip, you drip, they drip. My own thoughts in cheerful mood run on Lower Burma after the monsoon when the climate is its muggiest, and heat apoplexy; in despondent hours, upon earthquakes and

be otherwise; for fifty years he has spent eleven hours a day in the Grotto with an interval for dinner. This has also narrowed his outlook upon life, and he has but one topicthe place wherein he has spent his sub-earthly career. He will tell of the cures he with these eyes has seen. Catching such words as meravigliosissimo, incredibilissimo, and like stimulating polysyllables, I suspect him of quoting from the advertisements one sees in the railway stations. I do not know Italian. Like other ignorant Britons, recognising two words in a sentence, I guess three more, and apply the doctrine of probabilities to the remainder; and kind people expound when the bath-man becomes interesting.

He means well, but thus to cherish us with hope is not necessary. We with our eyes see a newcomer brought in a carrying-chair, who, after a few days, appears on crutches; then with sticks; last, to resume his quality as a biped. As a variant from cures the

bath-man narrates the story of the discovery of the virtues of the Grotto. It was an idling goatherd who, exploring the cavern without a candle-goatherds in their vocation are seldom supplied with candles, -took a rash step and fell into a deep crevice, and stayed there till found thirty-six hours after, and drawn out with ropes. Our sympathies go out to that goatherd. We wonder what he was like after thirtysix hours of it: whether there was enough of him left to enjoy the life-long immunity from rheumatism which was the reward of his sufferings and made the reputation of the Grotto. There are lacunæ in the bath-man's information : he cannot tell us, for example, whether they began by keeping people here for thirty-six hours at a stretch and discharging their victims as cured; whether it was only by repeated hunger - strikes that patients got the sentence reduced to an hour a day. The bath-man glides away from such questions to tell us of the eminent and famous persons who have been restored to health here since that pioneer goatherd was extracted from the crevice-cardinals, princes, dukes, and Garibaldi. Again this is unnecessary, for their names are graven on tablets of marble-Italy is addicted to recording events and doings of all descriptions on tablets of marble-set in the wall at the public entrance, tablets which at first sight bear de

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pressing resemblance to memorials of the dead; but the dates refer only to the visit of the eminent or famous person.

Nobody professes to understand how the atmosphere of the Grotto achieves its results. The bath-man speaks of it as the

Magician's Cave; the Faculty speak of radio-activity; and it appears to me that one is as satisfying as the other, leaving us just where we were. But what does it matter when the Grotto does eliminate rheumatism? Let us accept its blessings and refrain from curious inquiry. All it asks of us is that we shall drip. We drip.

There are

The assembly is never the same for three days together. Patients pay their twelve visits and go; new ones come. Thus it is that the social atmosphere of Inferno varies. days when we sit looking at each other as if waiting for some one to start a round game; days when silence is the rule and we devote ourselves to ourselves, with the result that we appear engaged in the weaving of spells-an appropriate occupation in a magician's cave. Here is a spare woman massaging earnestly a favourite knuckle; there a stout man flourishes assiduously a hand in the interests of a stiff wrist; there a lady, murmuring what sounds like a charm, manipulates an elbow. A large man by her side is making grimaces expressive of pain that should elicit sympathetic

The Grotto opens at eight, and for an hour is reserved to us who are guests at the hotel, which has been built against the hillside annexe, as it were, to the cavern, with which it communicates by tunnel or passage that we need not go out of doors. After nine come the visitors from without even from Pistoia, where they have no baths; and from Montecatini, across the vale, where they have, but prefer the Grotto. In summer, which is the season, two hundred patients daily spend the prescribed hour in Inferno.

Quietude, born of the somnolence which is excusable in people just out of bed, prevails at first; then neighbours, discovering a language in common, exchange courtesies in undertones. Anon one speaks of symptoms: common ground has been reached; tongues are loosed, voices rise, the owners growing eager and descriptive. Others, breathing the thick air, punctuate thought with glances at the clock, and sigh at intervals. We cannot read-the vapour obscures one's glasses nor play Patience: the drip from above would spoil the cards. We can only sit and do that for which we

are here. I drip, you drip, they drip. My own thoughts in cheerful mood run on Lower Burma after the monsoon when the climate is its muggiest, and heat apoplexy; in despondent hours, upon earthquakes and

mentioned aloud in the Grotto : it would be tactless to speak of earthquakes here.

It could not

Sometimes when he has nothing else to do, the bath-man comes from his cubicle in Purgatorio and delivers an encouraging oration. The bathman is venerable and emaciated; bare of foot, in his long white gown he appears as a prophet employed in a steam-laundry. be otherwise; for fifty years he has spent eleven hours a day in the Grotto with an interval for dinner. This has also narrowed his outlook upon life, and he has but one topicthe place wherein he has spent his sub-earthly career. He will tell of the cures he with these eyes has seen. Catching such words as meravigliosissimo, incredibilissimo, and like stimulating polysyllables, I suspect him of quoting from the advertisements one sees in the railway stations. I do not know Italian. Like other ignorant Britons, recognising two words in a sentence, I guess three more, and apply the doctrine of probabilities to the remainder; and kind people expound when the bath-man becomes interesting.

He means well, but thus to cherish us with hope is not necessary. We with our eyes see a newcomer brought in a carrying-chair, who, after a few days, appears on crutches ; then with sticks; last, to resume his quality as a biped. As a variant from cures the

bath-man narrates the story of the discovery of the virtues of the Grotto. It was an idling goatherd who, exploring the cavern without a candle-goatherds in their vocation are seldom supplied with candles, -took a rash step and fell into a deep crevice, and stayed there till found thirty-six hours after, and drawn out with ropes. Our sympathies go out to that goatherd. We wonder what he was like after thirtysix hours of it: whether there was enough of him left to enjoy the life-long immunity from rheumatism which was the reward of his sufferings and made the reputation of the Grotto. There are lacunæ in the bath-man's information : he cannot tell us, for example, whether they began by keeping people here for thirty-six hours at a stretch and discharging their victims as cured; whether it was only by repeated hunger strikes that patients got the sentence reduced to an hour a day. The bath-man glides away from such questions to tell us of the eminent and famous persons who have been restored to health here since that pioneer goatherd was extracted from the crevice-cardinals, princes, dukes, and Garibaldi. Again this is unnecessary, for their names are graven on tablets of marble-Italy is addicted to recording events and doings of all descriptions on tablets of marble-set in the wall at the public entrance, tablets which at first sight bear de

pressing resemblance to memorials of the dead; but the dates refer only to the visit of the eminent or famous person.

Nobody professes to understand how the atmosphere of the Grotto achieves its results. The bath-man speaks of it as the Magician's Cave; the Faculty speak of radio-activity; and it appears to me that one is as satisfying as the other, leaving us just where we were. But what does it matter when the Grotto does eliminate rheumatism? Let us accept its blessings and refrain from curious inquiry. All it asks of us is that we shall drip. We drip.

There are

The assembly is never the same for three days together. Patients pay their twelve visits and go; new ones come. Thus it is that the social atmosphere of Inferno varies. days when we sit looking at each other as if waiting for some one to start a round game; days when silence is the rule and we devote ourselves to ourselves, with the result that we appear engaged in the weaving of spells-an appropriate occupation in a magician's cave. Here is a spare woman massaging earnestly a favourite knuckle; there a stout man flourishes assiduously a hand in the interests of a stiff wrist; there a lady, murmuring what sounds like a charm, manipulates an elbow. A large man by her side is making grimaces expressive of pain that should elicit sympathetic