my boy? 
  The Session’s Bills are half-forgotten things. 
  Is there discussion in our little Isle? 
  Let Parties broken so remain. 
  Factions are hard to reconcile: 
  Prate not of Law and Order—­by the main! 
  There is a fussiness worse than death
  Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
  Lost labour, and sheer waste of breath,
  Sore task to hearts dead beat by many wars,
  And ears grown dumb with listening to loud party jars.

V.

  But propt on sand and pebbles rolly-olly
  How sweet (while briny breezes fan us lowly)
  With half-dropt eyelids still,
  Beneath a boat-side tarry, coally,
  To watch the long white breakers drawing slowly
  Up to the curling turn and foamy spill—­
  To hear far-off the wheezy Town-Crier calling,
  “Oh, yes!  Oh, yes!” Truly, TOBIAS mine,
  This solitude a deux is most divine;
  A Congress we—­of Two; where no outfalling
  Is possible.  Our Anti-Labour line
  Is wordlessly prolonged, stretched out beside the brine.

VI.

Such Lotos-eating all at times must seek!  The Lotos blows by many an English creek. Punch is no “mild-eyed melancholy” coon, Born, like the Laureate’s islanders, to moon In lands in which ’tis always afternoon.  No, TOBY, no!  Yet stretch your tawny muzzle Upon these tawny sands!  We will not puzzle, For a few happy hours, our weary pates With Burning Questions or with Dull Debates.  We have had enough of Measures, and of Motions, we, “Ayes” to starboard, “Noes” to larboard (in the language of the sea), Where the wallowing SEYMORE spouted like a whale, and COBB made free.  Let us take our solemn davy, TOBY, for a space (Punch perceives complete approval in that doggish face)—­ Let us take our davy, TOBY—­for a time, now mind!—­ In this briny Lotos Land to live and lie reclined, On the sands like chums together, careless of mankind!

    [Sleeps.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  MR. PUNCH’S ANTI-LABOUR CONGRESS.]

* * * * *

SOME CIRCULAR NOTES.

CHAPTER II.

ON TOUR—­RESTAURATION—­METHOD—­RAPID ACT—­PATRIOTISM—­CHORUS—­DINNE
R—­FORWARDS—­ENTREE—­EXIT—­DESTINATION.

With DAUBINET I soon acquire the careless habit of speaking any French that comes into my head, irrespective of grammar, genders, or idioms.  If he doesn’t understand it in French he will do so in English, or vice versa.  On this mutual comprehension system we get along as easily as the express does, and as easily as the boat does too, to-day,—­for we are in luck, the weather is delicious and the sea propitious,—­and so we arrive hungry and happy at the excellent buffet at the Calais Station, the praises of which I have sung more than once in my lifetime.