The Commissioners observe, with regret, that the ordinary sneeze has been lately prevalent, but it does not appear that any safe mode of treatment has yet been discovered for checking it. The Commissioners think it better to trust to nature in such a matter, though they have known the operation of drawing the finger smartly along the bridge of the nose, towards the forehead, sometimes successfully resorted to.
A Set-of China-1843.
CHINA.
Private Letter from a Corporal in a Regiment forming part
of the Expedition.
Adawed Gal,
Here I am in Chainy, and its rather hominous that, after all your jellessy of Nancy, I should have been brought to Chuse-Ann; but that's nayther here nor their, for I've only my duty to my kernel, which lays in a nutshel. If I'd a been one of the unattached, it would not have signeyfied, but the War Office is nothing but stone, as anybody may see, who looks at it with half a high, and the Horse Guards is, by natur, as illumered as the illumernatured clock at the top of it. But never mind; though Guvament sends my legs on a march that lasts from Jannivary to Deesember, my art can stay in the deepot of your affexions. Yes, there, without the aid o' barracks, it is reglarly barrackaded. But I spose you'd like me to tell yer something about Chainy and the Chainees. Well, yew no the plates called the villa pattern, with three fellers on a bridge, looking as if they vus a goin fishin—the vun vith a boatook, tother vith a deal board, and the thurd vith a cricket ball tied to the hend uv a walkin stik. Nou, I dare say yew think that's a korrect drawin of Chainees men and manner; but, spoonies as they are, I never seed 'em makin such preshious hasses of themselves, as they are in all the plates yure muther has of 'em. Then the tree with the horanges, is only to puff off the real Chainy, as they sells for two a penny in the streets; bekause if they vus only half as big as the hartist has made 'em they'd be whoppers indeed, and the Chainees karacter is rayther the other way; for they're always whopt themselves, instead of being whoppers.
Ven I new I vus a goin to Chainy, I took a number of Chambers; I don't meen that I highered a sweet of rooms, but I bort the Hinformation for the Peeple, treatin (as they calls it, though one has to pay for the treat) of Chainy. Akordin to the book, I find that the natives call Chainy the middle country, and it really is among the middlins, for everything about it is werry indifferent. The Great Wall runs so far that one can't say where it goes to, vich is exakly the way with the troops, though it's ony in the long run that they are anything like the wall, for they don't behave at all like bricks in any other partickler. A good deal has been said about the sighs of the Grate Wall of Chainy, and won says won thing, and won another; so that I've come to the konklusion that it's just as broad as it's long, and that settles it. One side of the place is bounded by the Pacific; and I spose it's bathing in the Pacific that makes the natives fight so preshusly shy of fightin. I hunderstand the hurth used to be a good deal given to hurthquaking; but the ground has given up that game, and the quakin bisness is now dun by the military, who are no great shakes after all, xsept in that rispect.
The natives say that Chainy is older than the deluge, but this must be a delugion. At hall events it's not much like a place of the furst vater. I think they make a mistake about the time when the flood happened, for they were overrun by a tremendous great Khan, who plunged them into hot water, and poured the cream of the Tartar troops all over them. This made such a heffervescence as never was; and as all the provinces was swamped, it's like enuff they mistook the bursting out of this great Khan for the reglar deluge.