ng his cigar with his
toothpick, and politely intimating, by his eyebrows, that you and your
necessities may go to the deuce--what's _that_? When you are doing the
sanitary at Weedon, by some hideous conjunction of evil destinies, in
the very Ducal week itself, and thinking of the rush with which Tom
Alcroft will land the filly, or the close finish with which Fordham will
get the cup, while you are not there to see, are sorely tempted to
realize the Parisian vision of Anglo suicide, and load the apple-trees
with suspended human fruit;--what's _that_? When, having got leave, and
established yourself in cosy hunting-quarters, with some cattle not to
be beat in stay, blood, and pace, close to a killing pack that never
score a blank day, there falls a bitter, black frost, locking the
country up in iron bonds, and making every bit of ridge and furrow like
a sheet of glass--what's _that_?

Bah! I could go on ad infinitum, and cite "circles of purgatory" in
which mortal man is doomed to pass his time, beside which Dante's Caina,
Antenora, and Ptolomea sink into insignificance. But of all Purgatories,
chiefest in my memory, is----Pera. Pera in the old Crimean time--Pera
the "beautiful suburb" of fond "fiction"--Pera, with the dirt, the
fleas, the murders, the mosquitoes, the crooked streets, the lying
Greeks, the stench, the hubbub, the dulness, and the everlasting "Bono
Johnny."

"Call a dog Hervey, and I shall love him," said Johnson, so dear was his
friend to him:--"call a dog Johnny, and I shall kick him," so abominable
grew that word in the eternal Turkish jabber! Tell me, O prettiest,
softest-voiced, most beguiling, feminine AEothen, in as romantic periods
as you will, of bird-like feluccas darting over the Bosphorus, of curled
caiques gliding through fragrant water-weeds; of Arabian Nights
reproduced, when up through the darkness peals the roll of the drums
calling the Faithful to prayers; of the nights of Ramadan, with the
starry clusters of light gleaming all down Stamboul, and flashing,
firefly-like, through the dark citron groves;--tell me of it as you
will, I don't care; you may think me a Goth, _ce m'est bien egal_, and
_you_ were not in cavalry quarters at Pera. I wasn't exacting; I did not
mind having ants in my jam, nor centipedes in my boots, nor a shirt in
six months, nor bacon for a luxury that strongly resembled an old file
rusted by sea-water, nor any little trifle of that sort up in the front;
all that i