you do not relish meat half raw, or scorched to a cinder; potatoes like starch, or like soap; the plates hot enough to scorch the tablecloth, or cold enough to freeze the mutton into icicles.

Never openly deny what Sukey, Jemima, or Sara may affirm; but always doubt it. This is the grand secret for living in perpetual warm or hot water with your domestics, and for making a good

servant.

RULE III. TO WRITE A GOOD LETTER.

NEVER, on any account, be familiar or natural on paper. Never write to "Dear Brown" as you talk to him. Garnish every sentence with a French phrase, a morsel of Latin, or a scrap of Greek. Always write in a dignified manner, keeping in mind who you are, and how admirably you walk on stilts. Never come down. Write with a wiry steel-pen, in close lines, and cross at least the last page; so that the beautiful quotation of family "reunion," "malgre" all the "contretemps" of the approaching festive season, &c. may be deliciously apparent to Brown's weak eyes and extensive knowledge of French.

Remember that the longest words have most in them; and grand phraseology is a mark of distinction. Be sure, therefore, to write like the mighty Samuel's Quarto Dictionary; and in proportion to the polished pomposity of diction will be the facile success of the scribe's caligraphy.

It must not be forgotten, even on letter-paper, that language was "given us to conceal our thoughts." How successfully some men

use it!

P.S. Always write in a hurry, just before the exit of that inevitable monster, the Post.

Though few, these hints are infallible.

A ROUGH SCRAMBLE TO PARIS.

"Who's for Calais, the packet's now sailing?
Pray be quick, or you'll all be too late."

OLD SONG.

THUS writes the charming poet; and so, reading Boulogne for Calais, ought we to have sung, as, on the 28th of July, in the year of Grace 1854, we left Folkstone for another scramble. What with the shaking and jogging of the railway, the everlasting dust, the scramble and confusion of the "through" passengers for Paris, the screaming whistle of the flaming, tearing, locomotive, the blowing off and turning on of the steam; the buzz and rumble of the impatient steamboat, and the expiring blasts of the now exhausted monster that had brought us fifty miles from London in but twice as many minutes, we had been well nigh bewildered. But, notwithstanding the frantic gestures of the lady passengers, and particularly of the one elderly virgin, who was nervously convinced she'd left the largest half of fifteen boxes far behind her in the happy retreat of peaceful Chobham, we walked on board the Clementina first-class steamer (according to advertisement, and not always truthful and intelligible Bradshaw), bound for Boulogne, and managed to comfort ourselves in spite of the anxiously affectionate greetings of our old friends, the porters of the Pavilion, and the sinister remarks of the myriad lookers-on, who loudly pitied, whilst they silently envied, our lot.

Fine weather with a fresh breeze, much rolling, and, as a natural consequence, considerable sickness (not personal), furnished amusement as well as occupation on this oft-travelled route.

Of all odd studies, perhaps one of the oddest is to watch one's fellow travellers on a short sea voyage. The struggle between sickness and the determination to withstand its dread approach, makes children of the brave, and prostrates the most resolute and ironhearted. Around us lay, uncomfortably strewn upon the deck, welldressed females, utterly heedless of their intensely new travelling dresses of tartan-plaid, now drenched with the first sad wash of briny spray, and ingloriously losing their brightest tints and splendour beneath showers of a nature far less refined than the tears of Neptune. Not two yards from where we sat, reclined a sturdy Gent, who had bought a four-pound-ten return ticket to the land of frogs. This hero, blanched by the combined effects of the rolling waves and bad cheroots, hugged his newly bought flask of British Brett and swore mightily-as a Briton-he'd never more venture further from safe

Cheapside, than fashionable Rosherville or mild Southend. With corpse-like look and drunken visage, he meanwhile fed the fishes; in abject misery draining his bottle to the dregs; and, when pluck and spirits had completely left him, subsiding into utter stagnation. Basins, by dozens, were planted on the deck; and sturdy sailors, clad in nautical Siphonias, lent a timely, kind, and willing hand to suffering humanity. One canny yeoman, from the land of cakes, who sat hard by our British hero, smoked, to the horror of his nauscated neighbour, and tried in vain to raise the sinking feelings of surrounding qualmists, by boasting how he had "Lived for sax-andtwenty days, upon a Leith and Berwick smack, with nare to eat but bannocks and the mountain dew, and never gave the hungry fish a passing morsel."

Close on the heels of Scotia's hard son, we observed a loquacious, though aged muff, who abused the rolling of the vessel, and tried to show his nautical propensities and skill, by loudly rating packet, captains, engineer, and crew, down to the very steward's basin-emptiers and powder-monkies. The steamer, according to his view, "was much too long, hadn't enough beam, carried more top hamper than she ought, and didn't make sufficient head-way against the ebb." We were at a loss to understand what all this meant, and necessarily concluded that he must either have been a retired wine merchant bound to purchase Rugee* as future Claret, and had been drinking his own samples; or a gentleman in the basket line. A timely end was put, however, to his soliloquy, by sundry knocks which he received on a somewhat prominent part of his person, from a young and seagoing yachtsman, who, to exhibit his thorough appreciation of other people's misery, kept continually attempting to perambulate the deck, and as continually tumbled headlong against our prostrate friend. The poor wretch was, in reality, too nearly in the condition of one in the agonies of a dose of ipecacuanha (which by the way he would on no account have admitted), to do more than grumble at the stupidity of those who "wouldn't let a body enjoy the works of nature, or admire the perfections of engineering art, or, what was more relevant to the occasion, to be sick in peace."

A quarrel between an octogenarian, with an umbrella, and the above-named yachting gent, filled up the remainder of our time and brought us safely within sight of Boulogne, with its column, sands, and crowds of dirty, thread-bare, English.

A steamer passed us on her way to England just as we were entering the harbour, and its screeching whistle, like that of a loco

Rugee. The learned reader will scarcely need to be informed that this wine strongly resembles the ancient mixt Falernian of Horatian glory; mainly composed of the washing out of empty wine butts.-PRINTER'S DEVIL.

motive-engine, yelled at us as we grumbled by. These steam-whistles are a great improvement on the bells of former days, as they can be heard for miles through fog and mist, and are readily blown.

Touters and well-dressed females lined Boulogne pier, as we steamed alongside, and here and there, among the motley throng, spied some half-starved, newly caught and labelled conscript, in the distinguished and distinguishing garments of the Gallic legion, who, with folded arms and Napoleonic gesture, was contemplating the fresh arrival of his Anglo-Saxon brothers, who, until very lately, had been regarded only as "Les perfides Anglais." Clatter and row, ropes and ladders, fishwomen, porters, and "douanniers," were scrambling for some unattainable object, and were jumbled together pell mell; whilst the dead and dying, from their recent cabin-cages, rushed in wild confusion on the vessel's deck, with but one idea reigning supreme, that of gaining terra firma, and quitting the scene of their misery.

We fought most nobly to the gangway; and after considerable pressure from behind, reached the summit of the ladder and proceeded through a double row of cockney travellers, who after a week in France had discovered more than Thiers and Guizot of her future destiny; and at last found ourselves within the awful precincts of a foreign Custom House. A dirty room, a sanded floor, a proclamation five feet long and twice as broad, a horrid smell of stale tobacco and garlic greeted us on entering. A narrow door was forthwith opened, and then a frantic rush took place towards the inmost penetralia. Those who should be last, were let in first, and passports were awfully examined and at last returned; though every wrap or bundle, shawl or Macintosh on one's back or across the shoulders, was looked upon as so much contraband property, and unhesitatingly pounced upon, torn from the wretched foreigner, and banded "fore and aft" through the hands of at least twenty unwashed militarylooking mongrels, in coats of best ceruleo-verdant drugget.

We were, unfortunately, provided with a well-worn, weatherbeaten, overall, in the shape of a regular Cowes dreadnought jacket ; which had done good service at home and abroad.

This said "waterproof" had paid duty again and again at the very custom-house, through which we now hoped to pass unnoticed. We had consigned it to the tender care of our beloved Hector, and, having forgotten the dangers of such a "run," had almost escaped, when we found our weather-beaten friend again an object of customhouse solicitude. It forthwith disappeared, and with it our juvenile domestic, who, like a true-born Swiss, preferred to risk his life in defence of his master's property, rather than let a Frenchman take a dirty advantage of unprotected innocence.

Once more in the open air, we breathed again, for happily the passports were en règle,” and then our only ambition was to reach the train in time for Paris, ere the night closed in. On no such sweet delusion should we venture again; as no sooner were we relieved from the awful functionaries of the custom-house and passport office, than we were beset by that host of harpies who, "Ex rapto vivere nati," prey on the sick, the helpless, and the sea-tossed biped.

We ran the entire gauntlet of all the waiters, porters, shoeblacks, and commissioners of the thousand hotels with which this place abounds; and, after stoutly edging our way through this importunate, but no doubt hospitable crowd, found refuge in a "onehos shay," and reached the Rail in the very nick of time, after paying full twice the legal fare, losing our temper, and all but our train. Meanwhile, hapless Hector yet remained behind, true to his trust, and nothing daunted by the threats and gesticulations of the indignant dandies of the Customs. There was no remedy, in such a case, but to tire out the patience of the infuriated douanniers; so we left him to the tender care of the Boulogne authorities and their bearded officials, bidding him secure the Macintosh at any price and join us by a later train in Paris.

After a very hasty and unsatisfactory lunch off diminutive fowls and toughish "gigot," together with more scrambling, gesticulation, and French official dignity, we started in a comfortable first-class carriage, with the assurance that we should complete our journey undisturbed to the capital of the French empire. At six, p. m. we were fairly en route, and at twelve and a half arrived at Paris; having had to change carriages at Amiens in the dark, and again at the Brussels junction, some little distance further on the road. The inconvenience of such a change as this, to be fully enjoyed, must be encountered in the dark; whilst every one is talking, and no one seems to understand where to betake himself, or if bound for Paris or for Valenciennes. The cause of such unnecessary delay is the stinginess of the Railway people, who will not get the steam up with an extra engine, but make one wretched blazer drag the heavy combination train right through to Paris.

In consequence of such niggardly management, we did not reach Paris until the dead of the night, where, as might be supposed, fresh difficulties beset us. Our luggage had to be examined, though all our keys were far away with gallant "Hector" at Boulogne. What could we do? We told our tale to the most humane looking of the fierce "octroirians," who nobly took our word that neither carrots, greens, or other eatables were secreted in our leather trunks, let us pass unharmed, and, what was better still, unexamined. Then came the horrors of a drizzling rain, the fruitless search for a commodious