am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself
with the Irish melodies. " Rich and rare were
the gems she wore," is the particular melody
to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to
myself in the most charming manner and with
the greatest expression. Now and then, I raise
my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet
seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes,
but I don't mind it,) and notice that I am a
whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledore
of a lighthouse on the French coast and a
fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English
coast; but I don't notice it particularly,
except to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais.
Then I go on again, " Rich and rare were the
ge-ems she-e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring
on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O her beauty
was fa-a-a-a-r be-yond " — I am particularly
proud of my execution here, when I become
aware of another awkward shock from the sea,
and another protest from the funnel, and a
fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly
indisposed than I think he need be—"Her
sparkling gems or snow white wand, But O her
beauty was fa-a-a-a-a-r be-yond"—another
awkward one here, and the fellow-creature with the
umbrella down and picked up, " Her spa-a-rkling
ge-ems, or her Port! port! steady! steady!
snow white fellow-creature at the paddle-box
very selfishly audible, bump roar wash white
wand."

As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes
of my imperfect perceptions of what is going on
around me, so what is going on around me
becomes something else than what it is. The
stokers open the furnace doors below, to feed
the fires, and I am again on the box of the old
Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the
light of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps,
and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-
boxes is their gleam on cottages and haystacks,
and the monotonous noise of the engines is the
steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the
intermittent funnel roar of protest at every
violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high
pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly
explosive steamer in which I ascended
the Mississippi when the American civil war
was not and when only its causes were. A fragment
of mast on which the light of a lantern
falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so,
become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris
where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it
must be morning now), and they dance to the self-
same time and tune as the trained steed, Black
Raven. What may be the speciality of these
waves as they come rushing on, I cannot desert
the pressing demands made upon me by the
gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged
with something about Robinson Crusoe, and I
think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first went
a seafaring and was near foundering (what a
terrific sound that word had for me when I was
a boy!) in his first gale of wind. Still, through
all this, I must ask her (who was she, I wonder!)
for the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping.
Does she not fear to stray, So lone and lovely
through this bleak way, And are Erin's sons
so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by
more fellow-creatures at the paddle-box or gold?
Sir knight I feel not the least alarm, No
son of Erin will offer me harm, For though
they love fellow-creature with umbrella down
again and golden store, Sir Knight they what
a tremendous one love honour and virtue more:
For though they love Stewards with a bull's-eye
bright, they'll trouble you for your ticket, sir—
rough passage to-night!

I freely admit it to be a miserable piece
of human weakness and inconsistency, but I no
sooner become conscious of those last words
from the steward than I begin to soften towards
Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing
that those Calais burghers who came out of
their town by a short cut into the History of
England, with those fatal ropes round their necks
by which they have since been towed into so
many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot,
I now begin to regard them as highly respectable
and virtuous tradesmen. Looking about me,
I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the
boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of
Calais Harbour, undeniably at its old tricks, but
still ahead and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness
of Calais, not to say of attachment to
Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak
notions that I will stay there a day or two on
my way back. A faded and recumbent stranger
pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a
basin, asks me what kind of place Calais is?
I tell him (Heaven forgive me!) a very agreeable
place indeed — rather hilly than otherwise.

So strangely goes the time, and on the whole
so quickly — though still I seem to have been on
board a week—that I am bumped rolled gurgled
washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before
her maiden smile has finally lighted her through
the Green Isle, When blest for ever is she who
relied, On entering Calais at the top of the tide.
For we have not to land to-night down among
those slimy timbers — covered with green hair as
if it were the mermaids' favourite combing-place
—where one crawls to the surface of the jetty,
like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming
up the harbour to the Railway Station Quay.
And as we go, the sea washes in and out
among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats
and in quite a furious manner (whereof we
are proud), and the lamps shake in the wind,
and the bells of Calais striking One seem to
send their vibrations struggling against troubled
air, as we have come struggling against troubled
water. And now, in the sudden relief and
wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to
have had a prodigious double-tooth out, and
to be this very instant free of the Dentists'
hands. And now we all know for the first time
how wet and cold we are, and how salt we
are; and now I love Calais with my heart of
hearts!

"Hôtel Dessin!" (but in this one case it is
not a vocal cry; it is but a bright lustre in the
eyes of the cheery representative of that best of