sion is to be dependent. It is thus we love you best. When we return at night from our labours, weary with the dust and turmoil of the city, we do not want to meet you haggard and toilworn like ourselves. No; we want—but, bless me! I am talking as eloquently as if I were a Foglander. Rather let me ask to what the paramount influence of women in Crapaudy is chiefly due. Principally to the enormous standing army which drains away the youth and energy of the country. Oh! Cossikin Tertius, why do not you begin to lessen the size of this overgrown monster? Some day, it may turn again, and rend you.
Whenever the Crapaudians see a person doing what appears to them an eccentric thing, they shrug their shoulders, and say:
“C’est un Brouillardeur.” (It is a Foglander.)
“Certainly they are mad, this people,” observed a Cigognard to me. “I am told that they pursue their national pastime of criquette under the burning sun of India, while it is well known that they played hockey on the ice at Melville Island with the thermometer at fifty degrees below the zero of Reaumur. Observe those two men now. They are practising in that heavy skiff (their racing-boat is laid up in Monsieur Aviron’s covered yard), this bitter November day, for the regatta next summer. For pleasure, too, my faith! When they might sit by a fire, and play dominoes the whole afternoon!”
In spite, however, of my friend’s sarcastic remarks, I am happy to say that, in this pursuit, Crapaudians are laudably striving to emulate the Foglanders. Gentlemen (not professional boatmen) are beginning to pull in good earnest, and also to train for pulling. There are men among them who are worthy of taking an oar at Chutney and Whew. Still the great mass of Crapaudians believe that, for strengthening the muscles, there is nothing like gymnastics. In feats of this nature they beat Fogland hollow.
I have hinted that I was at Cigogne during the month of November, and have not therefore mentioned the word “sea-bathing” which is otherwise as closely associated with one’s conception of this town as horse-racing with Longcaster. But at this season of the year the mere sound of the trisyllable makes you shiver, and your teeth chatter at the sight of the long line of idle machines drawn upon the sandy beach. Even in August the Foglander, accustomed at home to bathe boldly in his native buff, shudders as he emerges from the water in those dreadful clammy garments which Crapaudian propriety compels him to wear: the bare thought of them now is too horrible to be borne. Let us dismiss the subject, and rather take a brisk walk up Cossikin Street, observing Fogland men and manners as we go.
That short, red-faced man with greyish hair, who stands smoking a cigar at the door of his office, is Mr. Runcingham, the commission-agent, who does a good and increasing business, now that trade is so brisk, between the two great cities of Troynovant and Lutetia. Mr. Runcingham does not admire Cigogne or the Cigognards.
“It’s very aggravating, sir,” he says, “to be within four hours of your native metropolis, and have a foreign flag a-flying over your head.” Here he pauses and looks viciously at a harmless fishing-net which dangles in the wind a few doors up the next street. “As for the people,” he continues, “they’ve no enterprise. They’ve a two-penny-halfpenny-way of doing business that I can’t stand.”
“Good sporting country, though, Mr. Runcingham,” say I, maliciously aware that I am touching on a sore subject.
“Ah!” he exclaims, with a sort of hiss in his throat. “Good for them that can find the game. I couldn’t. Why, look at my case this last season. I had a pinter” (Mr. R. is somewhat old-fashioned in his pronunciation) “fetched over from Grover, paid a pound for a licence to carry arms, as they call it here, paid a tax on my dorg, paid ten pound for right of shooting, and I was continually in ’ot water and squabbles. You see, sir, property’s so split up and divided here, that you’re always getting on somebody else’s land without knowing it. Up comes the proprietor, some poor miserable fellow that scarcely knows the taste of butcher’s meat. Very polite, of course; they all are here. ‘His honour is not aware that he is trespassing. We shall be happy to drink his honour’s health.’ That means five or ten shillings. Well, I paid it at first; but, after a few days, I began to get savage, and told some of these chaps to go to blazes. They went to the mayor, and what with summonses, and citations, and verbal processes, I’m fairly sick of sporting in Crapaudy. I shot a few rabbits and a hare or two, and then gave it up in disgust.”
A little further up the street I pass the establishment of Mr. Cripps, who proclaims himself in prominent characters as the only Fogland chemist in Cigogne. Two or three other persons make a similar announcement, Mr. Cripps. You must settle amongst yourselves at whose door the falsehood lies. Mr. Cripps is quite a dashing-looking gentleman, wearing the long, drooping whiskers of his native land. He is so good-looking, that I wonder he does not pick up an heiress, if such “golden lasses” ever disport themselves in the waters of Cigogne. I know that in the summertime Cripps does what vulgar persons call a roaring trade, and his shop is filled with Fogland ladies, who may easily be distinguished from the natives by their flower-and feather-ornamented hats, their general tendency to bright colours, and, what is more agreeable, by their freshness of complexion and innocent freedom of manner. Foglanders not only read their own newspapers, patronise their own cooking, and drink their own beverages, they must, if poorly, take their own pills. And Fogland is celebrated all over the world for its patent medicines. The Bashkirs and Kalmucks of Tartary, who never heard of the famous victories of Waterblue and Tredegar, know and appreciate Swalloway’s Ointment. But I trust you won’t think the above mentioned ladies go to Cripps’s shop for physic, and such-like nasty stuff. Oh, no! perfumery is their vanity, and Mr. Cripps’s especial forte. He has as neat a way of insinuating a pair of magnetic hair-brushes, or a gold-topped smelling bottle, into a lady a possession as any of his brethren in Coxford Street or New Pond Street.
