I now thought our troubles would soon be over; mine were, very nearly so, in one sense at least:  for after Mrs. Coxe and Jemimarann, and Tug, and the maid, and valet, and valuables had been handed across, it came to my turn.  I had often heard of people being taken up by a Plank, but seldom of their being set down by one.  Just as I was going over, the vessel rode off a little, the board slipped, and down I soused into the water.  You might have heard Mrs. Coxe’s shriek as far as Gravesend; it rung in my ears as I went down, all grieved at the thought of leaving her a disconsolate widder.  Well, up I came again, and caught the brim of my beaver-hat—­though I have heard that drowning men catch at straws:—­I floated, and hoped to escape by hook or by crook; and, luckily, just then, I felt myself suddenly jerked by the waistband of my whites, and found myself hauled up in the air at the end of a boat-hook, to the sound of “Yeho! yeho! yehoi! yehoi!” and so I was dragged aboard.  I was put to bed, and had swallowed so much water that it took a very considerable quantity of brandy to bring it to a proper mixture in my inside.  In fact, for some hours I was in a very deplorable state.

NOTICE TO QUIT.

Well, we arrived at Boulogne; and Jemmy, after making inquiries, right and left, about the Baron, found that no such person was known there; and being bent, I suppose, at all events, on marrying her daughter to a lord, she determined to set off for Paris, where, as he had often said, he possessed a magnificent ——­ hotel he called it;—­and I remember Jemmy being mightily indignant at the idea; but hotel, we found afterwards, means only a house in French, and this reconciled her.  Need I describe the road from Boulogne to Paris? or need I describe that Capitol itself?  Suffice it to say, that we made our appearance there, at “Murisse’s Hotel,” as became the family of Coxe Tuggeridge; and saw everything worth seeing in the metropolis in a week.  It nearly killed me, to be sure; but, when you’re on a pleasure-party in a foreign country, you must not mind a little inconvenience of this sort.

Well, there is, near the city of Paris, a splendid road and row of trees, which—­I don’t know why—­is called the Shandeleezy, or Elysian Fields, in French:  others, I have heard, call it the Shandeleery; but mine I know to be the correct pronunciation.  In the middle of this Shandeleezy is an open space of ground, and a tent where, during the summer, Mr. Franconi, the French Ashley, performs with his horses and things.  As everybody went there, and we were told it was quite the thing, Jemmy agreed that we should go too; and go we did.

It’s just like Ashley’s:  there’s a man just like Mr. Piddicombe, who goes round the ring in a huzzah-dress, cracking a whip; there are a dozen Miss Woolfords, who appear like Polish princesses, Dihannas, Sultannas, Cachuchas, and heaven knows what!  There’s the fat man, who comes in with the twenty-three dresses on, and turns out to be the living skeleton!  There’s the clowns, the sawdust, the white horse that dances a hornpipe, the candles stuck in hoops, just as in our own dear country.