THE CHANNEL.
If the devil is not so black as he is painted, it must be because he has an occasional day of good humor. Some such wondrous interval is hinted at by people who profess to have seen the Channel sea smooth and calm. We remember it piled with mountains of anguish—one's poor head swimming, one's heart sinking, while an organ more important than either in this connection underwent a sort of turning inside out which seemed to wrench the very strings of life. But on this broken Sabbath our wonderful luck still pursues us. It is in favor of the neophytes that this new dispensation has been granted. The monsters of the deep respect their innocence, and cannot visit on them the vulgar offences of their progenitors. They bind the waves with a garland of roses and lilies, whose freshness proves a spell of peace. We, the elders, embark, expecting the usual speedy prostration; but, placing ourselves against the mast, we determine, like Ulysses, to maintain the integrity of our position. And it so happens that we do. While a few sensitive mortals about us execute the irregular symphony of despair, we rest in a calm and upright silence. Never was the Channel so quiet! We were not uproarious, certainly, but contemplative. A wretch tucked us up with a tarpaulin, for which he afterwards demanded a trifle. If civility is sold for its weight in silver anywhere, it is on English soil and in English dependencies. We, the veterans, took our quiet ferriage in mute amazement; the neophytes took it as a thing of course.
Arrived, we rush to the buffet of the railroad station, where every one speaks French-English. Here a very limited dinner costs us five francs a head. We accept the imposition with melancholy thoughtfulness. Then comes the whistle of the locomotive. "En voiture, messieurs!" And away, with a shriek, and a groan, and a rattle,—to borrow Mr. Dickens's refrain, now that he has done with it,—en route for Paris.