Oh dear! oh dear! What perils I have been through! You'll see me again shortly; but there have been momentums in my career when I said to myself, "Shall I ever aller out of this alive!" I escaped the Petersburg police; they punched out your Cartoon, and all the lines about the Czar and the Jews; that's why I was so persecuted, and why I was watched. I wish to Heaven you wouldn't have Cartoons about Czars and Jews just when I'm at Peterborough, I mean Petersburg; same name, different place. But there, that's all over now, and jamais will I go and put myself within the clutches of the Russian Bear again. The midnight sun must do without me in future. I send you a sketch I made of a gargle—I think that's the name—on a church-door in Lapland. Isn't it really droll? You're always bothering me for something droll, and now you've got it. Then, Mr. Punch, riding a reindeer at half-a-crown an hour. Then here are the little Lapps offering our sailors a lap of liquor; and I said to myself, "One touch of Nature," which struck me as just the very motto for the picture. I roared with laughter at it. "This'll do for 'em at home," I said, and so here it is. And look at the "Lapps of Luxury"! You know that "Lap of Luxury" is a proverbial phrase; and, as you told me to make some comic sketches of the manners and customs of the country, why, I've done so; and, if they ain't funny, I don't know what humour is. Voilà!
But you really must not expect me to grimace and buffoon. You must take me seriatim or not at all. I can't stand on my head to sketch. I can't do it. I nearly did do it, though, for when I had my sketching-book in my hand on board, the spanker-boom, or some such thing, came over suddenly and hit me such a whack on the head, that for two minutes I lay insensible, and thought I should never become sensible again. Rightly is it called "spanker-boom,"—that is if it is called so, or some name very like it,—for I never got such a whack on the head in all my life before. I hear the Booming still in my ears.
You can't expect a fellow to be funny, however funny he may feel (and I did feel uncommonly funny, you may take your oath!), under such circumstances. However, as the song says, "Home once more," and many a yarn shall I have to tell when I gather myself round the fireside, pipe all hands for grog, and sing you an old Norse song with real humour in it—though I dare say you'll say you don't see it—and so no more à présent from yours seasickly (I am quite well, but I mean I'm sick of the sea),
FLOTSAM, Y.A.
JOURNAL OF A ROLLING STONE.
FIFTH ENTRY.
Curious thing that to-day—after disappointment of failure for the Bar—letter comes from President of my old College, asking me "if I would accept a nice Tutorship for a time?" If so, "I had better come down and talk to him about it."
Decided a little time ago not to try "Scholastic Profession"—thought it would try me too much. Feel tempted now. Query—am I losing my old pluck? In consequence of my new "pluck,"—in the Bar Exam?