"Thalatta! Thalatta!" exclaims a youth of our party, who is home for the holidays. No one understands him except the stout man with the gout, who smiles approvingly, and asks the lad some recondite question concerning XENOPHON and the Anabasis, whereat the schoolboy shakes his head, and murmurs something about "not having got quite so far as that." No schoolboy home for the holidays ever has got as far as the question you put to him. All our schoolboy knows has been exhausted in that one quotation, and perhaps the stout gentleman with the touch of gout is not sorry that the boy's knowledge of Greek is limited. It is a venturesome thing for a man over fifty, who has not "kept up his classics," to tackle a boy fresh from school.
We lose sight of the sea, and descend into the little sleepy fishing village of Lulworth. An out-of-the-way place, with an excellent inn (the name of which escapes my memory, but it is the only inn near the bay), where there is good accommodation for man and beast. Here the lobsters belong to precisely the same family as do those caught at Swanage, and no higher praise can be bestowed on any lobsters, those of Cromer, in Norfolk, included, than this. "Show me your lobster, and I'll show you the man to eat it!" This is my sentiment down South-West, or due North. The stout and gouty hero, who might have failed to tackle the boy "fresh from school," now shows himself an adept at tackling a lobster fresh from the sea. But more about Lunch, Lobsters, and the Legend of Durdle Door "in our next."
Good News for Fizzionomists.—To quote The Merchant of Venice, "The World says, and I say so too," (i.e. The World of last week,) that "the quality of the Champagne (the writer is speaking of Moët and Chandon and Pommery and Greno) will be good." The crop is to be "six times that of last year." Excellent—if only it be six times superior! And oh! if it would only be just one-third less in price!! As the poet (which word rhymes with "Moët") of the Champagne country sings,—
"To keep a mens sana in corpore sano,
Give me in plenty my Pommery Greno."
But, at all events, so far as they are professionally judging from the face of the country about Epernay and Rheims, the Fizzionomists are more than likely to be right. Ainsi soit-il.
"Dollars and Sense."—According to all accounts, Mr. Daly has shown his "sense" in reviving this piece (for a short run), so we hope he'll pull in "the dollars."