Great QUEEN, whose deftest, doughtiest knight he seemed, MRS. R. IN A NEW PLACE. MY DEAR NEPHEW, MR. HACKSON has been as good as his word to LAVVY and myself. He promised to take us to a French bathing-place which we should like ever so much better than Bullown, and he has done it. He acted as our Currier all the way, which saved us so much trouble in looking after ourselves, as he was always before us. Well, the place he took us to is called Rosendael, the Dale of Roses, because there are so many jardangs day plants, as they call 'em in French, in the pretty little village which we walked through on Sunday, though of course the rose season is over now. When Mr. HACKSON told us that we must first go to Dunkirk to get to Rosendael, I thought he was joking, as I own I had always thought that Dunkirk was in Scotland; and I was right after all, as it was in Scotland till CHARLES THE SECOND sold it to the French, and of course sent it over to them, carriage paid, and delivered it and set it down on the coast just where it is now. It's a delightful old town, with a fine church dictated to Scent Hullo, and a tower with a carryalong in it. The carry-along is a set of bells which plays a tune feebly every half-hour, and sounds like a second-hand musical box on a shelf. This we did, and most enjoyable it was: the tramway, price twopence, took us in ten minutes to the bathing-machines, and the weather was so hot that we sat under sunshades, and actively breakfasted all frisky (as the Italians say) out in the open air, eating such wheaters, which is French for oysters, as I've never tasted in my life before, at two franks a dozen. They are the same sort as the celebrated wheaters of Dustend, on the Bulging Coast. It is a most healthy place, being famed for its general celebrity. The sands at Rosendael are three times as long and as broad as those of Ramsgate; in fact, they are very fine sands, and get into your boots in spite of everything. At Dunkirk, in the Plarse Jang Bar-so called after a great naval hero, a sort of Brigadier, whose statute, in a sort of chandelier dress of the seventeenth sentry, with a sword in his hand, like the pictures of RICHARD the Third at the Battle of Wandsworth -is a market for everything, from lace and saucepans to pigs'-feet and cabbages, fruit and flowers. It lasts nearly all the morning, and I wish a certain noble Duke could just see it, for one cannot help substituting a caparison between it and Covent-Garden Market. At the latter place it is all muck and muddle, but at Dunkirk you can walk or drive round it, three abreast, at any time; and, before two in the afternoon, the whole thing, except a few flower-women with baskets, has disappeared as if by magic, like SALADIN's palace, leaving, as the Swamp of Avon says, "not a rag behind." Not a sign that there's been such a thing as a market, not an odour anywhere, and no refusal lying in muck-heaps about the streets, and this, too, in very hot weather, which, at this time of year, is known in France as SAM MARTIN'S Summer, though I had always, myself, heard of SAM MARTIN as a Judge; yet, when I come to think of it, no doubt his summing-up was called a summery because it was so clear, and the prisoner, as Mr. HACKSON, who knows most legal lapidaries, says, got it hot" in the Summer Allsizes; so, putting this and that together there is a fair reason for calling it SAM MARTIN'S Summery weather. Mr. HACKSON says he is sure that during the regular season this place is far better than Bullown-which I'm inclined to call FlyBullown-and much more of a genuine change for English people, who can get here just as easily as to the other place, for you start the same way, and go through to Kallous; and supposing you are the early bird, and take the 7:40 A.M. train, from Victoria, and get to Kallous at 11, or thereabouts, by the twin-ship the Kally-twofor-her, and then you have an hour and a half to revive and eat the excellent lunch which is provided for the travellers at the Buffy, and after that you walk up to the Town Gar, and go off by the 1.30 train for Gravel Lines, which is the direct root, without any change, to our final desecration, which was Dunkirk. Mr. HACKSON says, that though he likes a direct line, yet he finds he can't go anywhere, however direct, without change, and plenty of it, from a Sue to a Frank. A Sue is a halfpenny, and a Frank is tenpence, which shows what value the French put on the male sex as compared with us poor women, who, in this country, seem to do most of the work, and be perfect smudges. Mr. HACKSON was quite right, and next year he promises to take us there in the Bathing-season, when I mean to buy for LAVVY and myself regular bathing-costumes, and come out in Spanish Flotillas. Mr. HACKSON says there's still signs of the Rosendael part of Dunkirk having been originally Scotch, because there is so much that is Sandy about it. But that's one of his caramboles. Yours, M. A. R. in full uniform, and we saw a lot of distillery practice on Monday P.S.-I forgot to say that there are plenty of millionnaires about The Dunkirkers are the respectablest people; there are very few firing shells, which is very likely, being so near the sea where they afternoon from the rampants. Mr. HACKSON says that they were song cutlets, as the French say, among them. And as to civility, they might be natives of Sweet Civil in Spain, instead of Frenchmen at potting shrimps, I saw he was at his caramboles again. I like a man can be got so cheap. But when Mr. H. told us that they were only Dunkirk. When the Gossoons hand anything to you, or take it away, to be serious sometimes, and Mr. H. is too much of a "jesting they always say, "Mair see," which, as I observed to Mr. HACKSON, proves that the Dunkirkers still keep their Scotch, as evidently Pilot," as the nautical people say, for me. "Mair see "" means that there was something mair coming, and so there always was. The Tarble doat at the Grand Hotel at Dunkirk, in the Rude Kappysangs, that's the name of the principal street, was very good. The breakfast and dinner at the Restowrongs called the Kaffy days Arcards "were," as Mr. HACKSON facetiously said, 66 quite first chop," though, of course, he meant fillies, which, I am bound to say, I refused to touch at first, thinking that fillies must be something to do with horses. A PLUCKY RHYME. "BOSH!" says G. HARRIS. "The Romany Rye! Umph! 'Tisn't a patch on my Drury Lane Triumph!" When we first arrived, we drove in an open vulture right Evolution," the Times quotes from the American Journal of Science, WHERE'S BARNUM ?-Under the heading, "A Curious Fact in through the town to the Casino (I objected to enter such a place, and tells us that "A single-cell creature known as a Protozoon," is but Mr. HACKSON told us that it was quite a different thing to what immortal. "Protozoon" sounds uncommonly like a primitive the Magistrates won't license in London) at Rosendael, and imagine Dutchman, that is, the single Dutchman: the "Protozoon" is a our disappointment when a most respectable and nice-spoken lady" single-cell creature". Well-one "sell," if it's a good one, told Mr. HACKSON,-who interrupted what she said in French to us, BARNUM? though most of it was quite ineligible to me,-that the Season had will take us all in. This (if read between the lines) is perhaps what finished on the fifteenth of September, that the Hotel and the Cure- the American Journal of Science really means. Anyhow, where's us-all (which is the salutary department) was shut up, that there was nobody here, and the best thing we could do was to go back to the town, and come out to the bathing by tramway in the morning. THE GEOLOGISTS' CLUB.-The Kentish "Rag." THE NEW SHERIFFS. (By Our Real Turtle.) MY SAVORY Sheriff! SA- DE KEYSER Some say, Sir, That can't be the way, Sir. Our Real Turtle Poet is evidently quoting from Macbeth, and intimates that in due course Sheriff SAVORY I will be Lord MOORE-no, we mean Lord Mayor. IMPRISONMENT OF THE REV. MR. GREEN.-Why remain there any longer? Why not follow the brave LOVETT's example, who escaped from Millbank last week? It only requires a slight relaxation of the ordinary care on the part of the officials, a rope round the body, an umbrella to bore a hole with, chewed bread to fill up the hole, a couple of planks, a quiet evening, and there he is. If the worthy prisoner, with his mens conscia recti, doesn't take the hint-well HE UNDERTOOK THE BURIALS ACT, A MOST SUCCESSFUL UNDERTAKING! NOW HE'S PAUPERS AND POR- WHILE London is troubled as to what it shall do with its paupers, Manchester is troubled as to what it shall do with its money. Instead of building more workhouses, London is thinking over a "clearinghouse "system, under which an overcrowded workhouse in one district can relieve itself by sending its surplus poor to a less crowded workhouse in another district. Instead of building more Cotton Mills, Manchester is thinking over an engineering scheme for bringing the sea to its doors, and turning the inky Irwell into a magnificent river. Manchester will find the money; perhaps London might help to find the labour? How many able-bodied paupers are now wasting their time in London breaking stones -a task that could be done in one-tenth of the time by machinery? AN ANTI-SANITARY BALLAD. "They would rather suffer martyrdom than give up its use."-Dr. CARPENTER on the Modern Silk Hat. O WAYWARD Fashion, be thou kind, Deal gently with thy child, And, if thou art to change inclined, THE VERY LATEST (DAILY) NEWS. (Vide somebody else's Special Correspondent at Cairo.) THE aromatic and spice-laden Eastern Zephyrs blowing now somewhat boisterously through the jewelled ivory-lattice down His Highness's back, with a sudden graceful and charming sneeze, he slid with perfect ton right across the polished jasper floor to the opposite side of the presence-chamber, where, drawing up with a courteous jerk, he deposited his head in the coal-scuttle, and smiled at us amiably. This little incident naturally gave rise to some quiet subacid humour, on our part, as to the financial embarrassments of His Highness's impecunious father, a piece of banter to which, with excellent breeding, he rejoined, by turning a double back-But bid me not resign for felt somersault that took him again into the very middle of the rosecoloured-satin feather-bed, on which he had previously been longing. Coy Goddess,-draw it mild! Array me in a velvet vest, I Cheap lace around me tack; With ribbon deck my Sunday best, Sew buttons down my back. And I will heed it not, We smiled, hastily, and the conversation then turned upon inferior used in France by the Director of Fine Arts to discover hidden SIGNS OF "THE TIMES."-"The Divining Rod" has been lately tinned oysters. The Khedive said, when they were bad, he did not treasure. For this "he has," says the Times, "incurred no little like them. We reminded him that, if steeped in a powerful disin- ridicule." fectant, and swallowed hurriedly, with plenty of cayenne and chili-where, Mr. BARLOW would use the divining rod pretty freely, and Yet, were TOMMY or HARRY to secrete treasure anyvinegar, and peppermint-drops taken after them, they could some- with the greatest possible success. Oddly enough, in the same paper, times be got down. He said this was true. We then asked him the there was a criticism on The Question of Cain, by Mrs. CASHEL amount of his washing-bill. To this he made no rejoinder, but HOEY. Either of those excellent preceptors, Dr. BIRCH, or Mr. laughed pleasantly for about three-quarters of an hour. Altogether, BARLOW would decide "the question of cane," by saying that they we spent a most delightful morning. had always found it answer. HAPPY-THOUGHT PROVERB (at a Table d'hôte without a Menu).— Treat every Dish as though it were your last. SIR BEAUCHAMP SEYMOUR objects to being rewarded with Baron honours. |