ks it won't do. "Yes it will," I urge--"it
will lighten it up. Who wants statistics without anecdote? Now
for an anecdote; and I knock one off, _sur le champ_, about the
engine-driver, the stoker, and several other persons, all on the
look-out for promotion, informing me of their being _Paddington men
of considerable political influence at home_. The Cautious Captain
accepts the anecdote, interpolates it, and after I have called for and
imbibed another tumbler of 'my own partik,' and lighted another cigar,
the Conscientious Captain resumes his entertainment."

NO PIANO.

He reads on. Another drink, just to rivet my attention. Will he take
something? No? Then _I_ will. His health, and song--I mean 'treatise,'
or whatever he calls it--say 'lecture.' Wish we'd had a piano. Never
will travel without one again. _Mem._--Gong and piano. I don't pretend
to be a thorough musician, but as a one-fingered player I'd give Sir
CHARLES HALLE odds and beat him. Now then--let's see where were we.
Another tumbler iced. Good. _Allez!_ Captain, go ahead!

[Illustration]

Somehow or another, after this--that is, I can only time it by the
fact of my having called for a fourth or fifth glass of iced drink, or
it may have been my half-dozenth, for time does fly so,--the Captain
having, I suspect, drank the greater part of the previous one whenever
I didn't happen to be looking that way--I begin to think I must have
once more given my assent by nodding to a lot of stuff of which I
could not nave heard more than three pages, as, when I arouse myself
from my reverie, the tumbler is empty, the Captain has gone out, and
so has my cigar.

AWAY! AWAY!

"Action is the word!" said I, suddenly jumping up; and, having seized
a spade, and provided myself with a large sack, which I carried across
my shoulders, I set off for the diamond-fields. Unrecognised by a
soul, I went to work on my own account; and the brilliant things I
saw--far more brilliant than even the witticisms of WOLFFY, or the
sarcasms of ARTHUR B! Into my sack go thousands of diamonds! The sack
is full! _Aladdin_ and the Lamp not in it with me! "Hallo!" shouts
a voice, gruffly. I could see no one. "_Vox et praeterea nil_," as we
used to say at Eton. Suddenly I felt myself collared. I made a gallant
attempt at resistance. A spade is a spade I know, but what is a
spade and one against twenty with pistols and daggers, headed by the
redoubtable Filliblusterer THOMAS TIDDLER himself? "S