The Poor For Whom A Hydropathic Course Is
Recommended, Can Have It Under The Regulations Made By The
Committee - That Is To Say, If There Is A Vacant Place.
There are trattorie and cafes at the hospice, where refreshments
may be obtained both good and cheap.
Meat is to be sold there at
the prices current in Biella; bread at two centimes the chilogramma
more, to pay for the cost of carriage.
Such are the bye-laws of this remarkable institution. Few except
the very rich are so under-worked that two or three days of change
and rest are not at times a boon to them, while the mere knowledge
that there is a place where repose can be had cheaply and
pleasantly is itself a source of strength. Here, so long as the
visitor wishes to be merely housed, no questions are asked; no one
is refused admittance, except for some obviously sufficient reason;
it is like getting a reading ticket for the British Museum, there
is practically but one test - that is to say, desire on the part of
the visitor - the coming proves the desire, and this suffices. A
family, we will say, has just gathered its first harvest; the heat
on the plains is intense, and the malaria from the rice grounds
little less than pestilential; what, then, can be nicer than to
lock up the house and go for three days to the bracing mountain air
of Oropa? So at daybreak off they all start, trudging, it may be,
their thirty or forty miles, and reaching Oropa by nightfall.
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