plan by which I might continue my sea b-indeed!-you can't contheive the thtate I bath and yet keep out the cold. I'll tell was in. In the first place, the water twic you what I did: 'I-I never said a word to kled up my thleeves, down though my any one on the matter, but I just went over pockets, in at my wethcoat, &c., &c., in the to Hannington's shop one morning, and I motht uncomfortable way-but that wathn't took one of the young men there aside the wortht of it, for in about half a minute and I thaid to him, "Aw-I-a-want a few yards of blanket." 66 'Beg pardon-my Lud"-(confound it they all know me there-beg pardon, of what did you say?" "Of blanket," I repeated. Beg pardon, my Lud-did you mean blanketing for ironing out fine linen upon? "Fine linen be- -be washed,”—I said "I mean blanket thuch as you put on beds." "Beg pardon-certainly, my Lud-Mr. Selvage! best Witneys this way if you please" So they bwought me some jolly fluffy looking stuff, and I asked for six yards of it, when one of the men (confound his impudence) began to gwin."Beg Ludship's pardon," said he, "but these are what we term Witney' blankets-and we couldn't cut them-but we can do you a pair at thirtynine and sivinpince." "All wight," I said. "Well, not quite white," said Mr. Selvage, "but as near as the wool can be bleached." "What the dooth do you mean?" I thaid, "didn't I t-thay all wight?—I—I'll take 'em-I mean you may send them to Messrs. Melton and Tweed (my tailors)—and look here-don't you give me any b-beathly copper change out of the two pounds or I'll never come here again." my b-blanket suit became tho satuwated Bwighton is filling fast now. dwoves of ladies evewy day on horseback, widing about in all diwections. By the way, I-I-muthn't forget to mention that I met those two girls that always laugh when they thee me at a tea-fight. One of 'em-the young one-told me, when I was intwoduced to her,--in-in confidence, mindthat she had often heard of me and of my widdles. Tho you thee I'm getting quite a weputathun that way. The other morning at Mutton's, she wath ch-chaffing me again, and begging me to tell her the latest thing in widdles. Now I hadn't heard any mythelf for thome time, tho By this time you will have p-perceived I couldn't give her any vewy gweat novwhat my object wath in b-buying blankets. elty, but a fwiend of mine made one latht I wanted to have a b-blanket b-bathing theason which I thought wather neat, tho I suit made-coat, wethcoat, and t-t-twow-athked her, When ith a jar not a jar? sers to wear in the water:-w-wathn't that a thtunning notion? ha! ha! Old Melton couldn't make it out when I gave him the order-I-ha! hahee! I told him it was for cwicket that I was having the suit made, and he thaid he thought I should f-find it wather warm (of courthe-the v-vewy thing I wanted). Well, the things were thent home in a few days, and one morning-I-I chose wather a chilly morning on purpose-I p-packed up my suit in a little carpet bag and walked down to the beach. I jumped into the bbathing machine, changed my d-dwess in a twinkling-and in another moment I was stwuggling with the waves. Stwuggling Thingularly enough, the moment she heard thith widdle she burtht out laughing behind her pocket handkerchief! "Good gwacious! wha'th the matter? said I. "Have you ever heard it before? Never," she said, in that form; do please tell me the answer." 66 66 So I told her,-When it ith a door" Upon which she went off again into hystewicks. I-I-I-never did see such a girl for laughing. I know it's a good widdle, but I didn't think it would have such an effect as that. By the way, Sloper told me afterwards that he thought he had heard the widdle be fore, somewhere but it was put in a differ ent way. He said it was: When ith a door, does care for partwidge shooting. I thupnot a door?-and the anthwer, When it ith pose "that's about the thize of it." ajar! I-I've been thinking over the matter lately, and though I dare thay it-d-don't much matter which way the question is put, still-pwaps the last f-form is the betht. It-it seems to me to wead better. What do you think? To tell you the twuth, I hate the countwy it's so awful dull-there's such a howid noise of nothing all day; and there is nothing to see but gween twees, and cows, and buttercups, and wabbits, and all that sort of cattle-I don't mean exactly cattle either, but animals, you know. And then Now I weckomember, I made thutch a the earwigs get into your hairbwushes if jolly widdle the other day on the Ethpla- you leave the bed-woom window open; nade. I thaw a fellah with a big New--and if you lie down on the gwass, those Newfoundland dog, and he inthpired me- howid gwasshoppers, all legs, play at leapthe dog, you know, not the fellah,-he wath a lunatic. I'm keeping the widdle but I don't mind telling you. Why does a dog waggle his tail? Give it up? I think motht fellahs will give that up! You thee the dog waggles his tail becauth, the dog's stwonger than the tail. If he wathn't, the tail would waggle the dog! Ye-yeth, that'th what I call a widdle. If I can only wecollect him, I shall athtonish those two girls thome of these days. LORD DUNDREARY IN THE COUNTRY. DIRECTLY the season is over in town, I always go into the countwy. Not, you know, that I like the countwy, but because it is expected of a fellow to go down and see his tenants and shoot partwidges when London gets empty-at least what they call empty; not that I can ever see any difference; for the omnibuses, you know, and P-PPickford's vans, and the coal-waggons, and Hanthoms never go out of town. But what I mean is, when the Wow gets empty, and houses are thut up, and blinds are pulled down, and nobody gives any parties, and there is nobody at the club but old Major Carlton, who b-b-bullies the waiters, and has the p-p-papers all to himself; and when the Opera's over, and there's no concerts or flower shows for a fellow, and everything's tepid but the soup at the club, and thath cold. But what no fellow can understand is, why the season lasts all the time the countwy is in its pwime, and just as it's getting yellow and seedy like a dowager at the end of the season, then everybody goes into the countwy -it's what I suppose nobody can make out; but they tell me it's because P-PParliament's over. So I imagine Parliament doesn't care for the countwy, and frog over your nose, which is howible torture, and makes you weady to faint, you know, if it is not too far to call for assistance. And the howid sky is always blue, and everything bores you; and they talk about the sunshine, as if there was more sunshine in the countwy than in the West End, which is abthurd, you know, only the countwy sun is hotter, and bwings you all out in those howid fweckles, and turns you to a fwightful bwicky color, which the wetches call healthy. As if a healthy man must lose his complexion, and become of a bwicky wed color-ha! ha!-bwickyhowid-bwicky wed color-cawotty wed color! Then that howid shooting that my keeper dwags me out to on the first of September. My man begins the torture by calling me before daybreak, and, half asleep, out I go into the Home Farm-the stubble sharp and hard, like walking over hair bwushesturnips with a cup of cold water in every leaf. Then the howid dogs go staring about, and stiffening their tails, and snarling as the birds wise with a noise like twenty watchmen's wattles spwinging at once, enough to deafen a fellow, and making any one quite nervous. Bang! bang!" I go-genewally miss— because the birds don't give one time, you know; and all those keepers and beaters, and fellows loading your gun and cawying the game and the luncheon-they disturb your aim, and put a fellow out. But I know something more howid still, and that's pheasant-shooting among those howid hazel bushes that switch back in a fellow's face, and howid bwambles that tear your coat, and oak boughs that knock your hat off, and the sharp stakes that wun into a fellow's boots; and pwesently in the middle of this up gets a pheasant like a squib going off on the fifth of November, or any other night, and off he goes like a special twain with wings, and so quick that no fellow can get a shot at him. Then there's wabbit-shooting, that's not so howid, but it's more difficult. "Forward," cries the keeper, and in the dogs go, all their tails worming in among the furze at once, as if being nearly torn to pieces was the gweatest fun in the world. You stand with your gun cocked waiting in a lane between the furze, evewy moment afwaid the other fellows will see you stir and shoot you in mistake for a wabbit; for the furze is higher than a fellow's hat. All at once you see a wabbit coming stwait towards you, and while you are waiting to see how near he will come, in he goes again into the furze quick as lightning, so that no fellow, you see, can shoot a wabbit. Then there's thnipe-shooting-howid difficult might as well go out shooting with pistol bullets at humble bees-ha! ha!-I say thath a good idea-that. Albert Smith, you know, poor fellow, if he had been alive, which he isn't-he'd have made a good idea out of that. A thnipe doesn't, you know, fly stwait like any wational bird ought to fly, but he dodges like a lawyer-a thort of bawister bird the thnipe is, and it takth several weeks to hit him. And that weminds me of a good story of Suffolk-told me about a thnipe a friend of his had down in Cambwidgeshire. He, Talboy's fwiend's fwiend had a fwiend (I want to be clear, you know) down to Cambwidgeshire to shoot. First day he goes out, Talboy's fwiend's fwiend fires at a thnipe in a water meadow, and kills him, upon which Talboy's fwiend gets vewy wild, and thwearth and thwows down his gun. Why," says he, "drat it, if you haven't shot the thnipe that has amused me the whole year!" That's not a bad stowy, I think, about that iwational bird, the thnipe. 66 Then the countwy people are sure to p -ester you to play a match at cwicket. The Zingawee against the Hodgeshire Eleven-marquees, band, everything down from London-scorching day, the cwicket ball wed hot, nearly sets the stumps on fire evewy time it stwikes. Now I like cwicket vewy well if I could get perpetual innings; but I don't like waiting an hour and a half-then going in and getting my stumps knocked over and my shins bwuised the first ball-it's what no fellah can enjoy. Besides, when I was a b-b-boy one didn't go to cwicket like a hog in armor, but just as you were. Then you could wun faster, and wern't so hot, and didn't look such b-b-born idiots. Then it is vewy difficult catching a swift ball with an eyeglass-I mean a fellow with an eyeglass on finds it difficult to see the ball, and gets it on his nose instead of in his hands--and then, if you do miss it, all the field calls out "b-b-butter-fingers," which is a low thing to say, you know, and makes a fellow look vewy widiculous. But there's one thing I do like in the countwy-besides the larks-the little naked chaps you see on a skewer at the poulterers in Bond Street, all among the Epping sausages, singing above your heads-and the smell of hay and clover-(I've got this sentence in a jumble that no man can make sense of)-and that's a picnic-pigeon pies and pork pie hats, girls and lobstersalads, pwetty faces and champagne-and all on the steps of an old castle that Richard the Conqueror bombarded-or in the cloisters of an abbey that Cromwell founded-or confounded, I don't know whichmusic and womance-wheumatism and poetwy. The girls look so pwetty among the wuins, and even the old dowagers gwow agweeable. Then the music begins and there's the dance in the moonlight, like Dinowah's shadow dance in Meyerbeer, and then the fellows laugh till the old walls wing again-that's what I call fun for the coun As for hunting-I don't see the p-ppull of it-except you want to induce a welation to bweak his neck in order that you may come into his pwoperty. I don't want to bweak my collar-bone or my wibs at b-twy-and pop go the champagne corks like b-bull-finches and waspers-or dwown myself at water-leaps-or bweak my legs at double fences-and that's what it comes to-and be tumbled upon in ditches by horse-jobbers and farmers, and get up and find your horse thwee miles off, and a monster with a pitchfork pursuing you, as the only one left, for twespassing. Oh, no hunting for me, thank you. a perpetual duel all the time; and the quantity dwank, considewing no lady pwofesses to like champagne, is what no fellow can understand. I think, if I ever did pp-pop the question, I should do it coming home from a p-p-picnic. Why? Why, because a fellow must do it somewhere, and coming home from a pic-nic in the moon. light is a vewy nice time. Of all countwy amusements I think fishing is, after all, pewaps the most abominable. It bores a fellow more than any other. You go out in a punt with a large hamper of luncheon, to keep it steady, I suppose, and an old keeper who takes too much beer to make it unsteady again, which is widiculous, you know. Then the keeper takes some howid wiggling wed worms out of a dirty bag of wet moss, and tortures the poor cweatures howidly by putting them on your hook, smiling all the time as if he was doing a mewitowious action--the old wuffian. Then you sit on your chair under an osier bed by the hour together, the bullrushes bobbing while you bob, till you get quite giddy looking at them, and the weeping willow weeping away like anything. Pwesently, after about an hour, just as you are half asleep, and beginning to enjoy it, you see your wed float moving in a most extwaordinawy way, as if it was curtsying. Then suddenly there comes a dwag that nearly pulls you off your chair. "A bite, sir, a bite," cwies the old keeper, seizing the opportunity to take another lift at the beerjug. Then you pull, and out onto the top of your hat flies a gweat monster of a perch, howid cweatures, with wed gold fins, stawing eyes, back a wegular fan of pwickles, a wet flabby tail, and gills like the leaves of a wed pincushion. And so it goes on, till you get all wet and dirty; and sometimes an eel dwags your wod away, and the old keeper, by this time nearly dwunk, has to swim after it; and sometimes you miss the stwoke, and catch a willow tree, which no fellow can land. And the only good time is when you put the wod and line down and go to luncheon. But there is one thing I like, that is, widing. I like to be astwide a horse-if he is not vicious or too fast, and if a fellow can manage him. I like sketching, too, only the twees will get so like cauliflowers, and the gwass like spinach-and the blue sky will wun, and get all over the paper. Altogether, take my word for it, the countwy ith a mithtake-it wants impwovingit is only fit for wed-fathed people, who thell corn. One twee is like another-one wiver can't be distinguished from another till you look at it on a map, and then, of course, any fellow can tell a wiver. Partwidges are much better woasted than on the wing, and people only pwetend to like shooting them. And as for lambs, they're i—i— idiotic little things, without mint-sauce, and there's no mint-sauce in the countwy. It is dwedful solitary in the countwy, when you're alone I mean-of course not with plenty of people. And one can't play billiards alone, and you can't have people in from the plough, you know, to play with a fellow, because it stops work. So if you think old fellow of going in the countwy to get a bwicky wed color, take my advice-as Lord B-Bacon or somebody said to a fellow who was what they call thpoony (foolish thing to be thpoony) on a girl, and going to marry her -and a capital thing it was to say-ha, ha! "Don't." POOR RICHARD'S SAYINGS, WITH ANNOTATIONS BY THE LORD DUNDREARY. A FELLAH once told me that another fellah wote a book before he was born-I mean before the first fellah was born (of course the fellah who wote it must have been born, else how could he have witten it?)-that is a long time ago-to pwove that a whole lot of pwoverbs and things that fellahs are in the habit of quoting were all nonsense. I should vewy much like to get that book. I-I think if I could get it at one of those spherical-no, globular-no, that's not the word-circle-circular-yes, that's it-cir culating libwawies (I knew it was something that went wound)-I think if I could just borrow that book from a circulating libwawy-I'd—yes, upon my word, now-I'd twy and wead it. A doothed good sort of book that, I'm sure. I-I always did hate pwoverbs. In the first place, they-they're so howidly confusing. I-I always mix 'em up together, somehow, when I twy to weck omember them. And besides, if evewy fellah was to wegulate his life by a lot of pwoverbs, what-what a beathtly sort of uncomfortable life he would lead! I remolect-I mean remember-when I was quite a little fellah in pinafores-and liked wasbewy jam and—and a lot of howid things for tea, there was a sort of collection of illustwated pwoverbs hanging up in our nursery at home. They belonged to our old nurse, Sarah, I think, and she had 'em fwamed and glazed. "Poor Richard's," I think she called 'em-and she used to saypoor dear—that if evewy fellah attended to evewything Poor Richard wote, that he'd get vewy wich, and 1-live and die happy ever after. However, it-it's vewy clear to me that he couldn't have attended to them himself, else how did the fellah come to be called Poor Richard? I hate a fellah that pweaches what he doesn't pwactice. Of courth, if what he said was twue, and he'd stuck to it, he-he'd have been called Rich Richard-stop a minute-how's that? Rich Rich-ard? Why that would have been too rich. Pwaps that's the reason he pweferred being Poor. How vewy wich! But, as I was saying, these picture pwoverbs were all hung up in our nursery, and a more uncomfortable set of makthims you never wead. For instance, there was what I do do. I'm always buying something or other that I don't want. I-I bought wather a neat thing latht theason. Ththey'd only just come out then. I d-daresay evewy fellah's got one now-and-s—so there's no use in having it any longer, but 'twas a vewy neat sort of thing, though, weally. I'll t-tell you what it was like. If you l-looked stwaight at it, you know, it 1-looked like an umbwella, and so it was an umbwella weally, and-ha, ha!-that's the betht of the joke-but it-it was a lot of other things bethide. In the first place the stock was an air-gun, which you could use, you know, in fine weather-when it was-wasn't raining, and you didn't want the umbwella. A utheful sort of thing an a-air-gun is, I'm told, in the the backwoods and those sort of howid places, when you haven't got-you know—a wegular gun. Well, and then the handle was made of ivowy, d'ye see ?-yes--that was it--an ivowy handle, and it opened, you know, with a thort of hinge, and inside was doothed pwetty sort of notion, that, I always thought-blue satin). The inventor of that m-machine must have been a man of taste. If I could only f-find him out, I'd-I'd ask him to bweakfast, I would, by Jove. I-I always like to encourage taste and the fine arts, "EARLY TO BED AND EARLY TO RISE MAKES A FELLAH HEALTHY, WEALTHY, AND WISE. I don't b'lieve a word of that-I'll tell you why. To begin with "healthy." When Sam and I were children we were all packed off to bed about eight or nine o'clock—a—was a pipe case, lined with blue satin (a just when a fellah ought to be dining-and had to get up at six or seven-quite the middle of the night you know-and pway did that keep us healthy? On the contwawy, we were always getting meathles, or whoop ing-cough, or vaccinathion, or some howwid complaint or other. As for mental impwove-and-and-all those sort of pwetty works of ment it's not the slightest use in that way, for I twied it at Oxford. When all the men of my time were sitting up weading for modewations, with wet towels round their heads, and dwinking gween tea-I-I went to bed-I did-and what was the consequence? I don't mind telling you now--but I -I was plucked. And then about "wealthy." Look at my bwother Sam. He used to be out shooting vewy early-I'm sure when he was homeand you know he's not over flush just now. That weminds me-he-he borrowed a couple of ponies of me just before he left England and stwange to say-he's forgotten all about it since. But I never could make Sam out. He's such a—a doothid inconthequential fellah-Sam is. Then there was another of Poor Richard's pwoverbs (confound him!)— "BUY WHAT THOU HAST NO NEED OF, AND ERE LONG THOU WILT SELL THY NECESSA- genius. Well, the handle was a pipe case, with |