dirty tap-rooms. The authors seem to plume themselves on their
marvellous success in reaching Monte Carlo, which, with their usual
sprightly facetiousness, they call "Charley's Mount." They are good
enough to tell such of the travelling public as may want to get there,
that the train leaving Victoria at 8.40 A.M. reaches Dover at 10.35.
Stupendous! These two greenhorns took their snack on board the steamer
(Ugh!), instead of waiting until they reached Calais, where there
is the best restaurant on any known line. Instead of going by the
_Ceinture_, they drove across Paris. The greenhorns arrive at Monte
Carlo, and then settle on their quarters. Anyone but an idiot would
have settled all this, and much more, beforehand. One gentlemanly
greenhorn, who wishes us to think that "_il connait son Paris_," talks
of "suppers of Bignon's" (which must be some entirely new dish),
and informs us that, "at the Hotel de l'Athenee, the staff esteem it
rather a privilege, and a mark of their skill in language, to grin
and snigger when sworn at in English." Oh, sweet and swearing British
greenhorn! now I know why the French so greatly love our countrymen.
But why, oh why do you imagine that you have discovered Monte Carlo?
For the details of the journey, and the instructions to future
explorers, are set out with a painful minuteness which not even
STANLEY could rival. As for Monaco, dear, restful, old-fashioned,
picturesque Monaco, whither the visitor climbs to escape from
the glare and noise of Monte Carlo, the greenhorn dismisses it
scornfully, as having "no interest." How much does this ten-per-center
want? He "waggles along the Condamine;" he mixes with many who
are "pebble-beached;" he speaks of his intimates as "Pa," "The
Coal-Shunter," "Ballyhooly," &c., and declares of the French soldier
that "the short service forty-eight-day men don't have a very
unkyperdoodlum time of it." There's wit for you, there's elegance!
Then he becomes Jeromeky-jeromistically eloquent on the subject of
fleas, throws in such lucid expressions as "chin music," "gives him
biff," "his craft is thusly," and, altogether, proves himself and
his fellow-explorer to be a couple of the slangiest and most foolish
greenhorns who ever put pen to any sort of paper. I can imagine
the readers who enjoy their stuff. Dull, swaggering, blatant,
gin-absorbing, red-faced Cockneys, who masquerade as sportsmen,
and chatter oaths all day. "Ditto to you," says the Baron to his
E