manner; and then we were let out
without the smallest explanation.

We had the honour of an interview with
Lord Fiddlededee's porter, upon the subject,
on the following day. My lord was taking
a music lesson, and could not be seen.
After some delay we were shown into a
room in which were a considerable staff
of well dressed young gentlemen warming
themselves in every variety of position; and
to these young gentlemen we were
introduced by a grave functionary, who could not
speak English. The young gentlemen seemed
to think we had met with a pleasant adventure,
and rallied us agreeably about it.

"But," said Mr. Gossop, dolefully addressing
one whose attention appeared to be
chiefly absorbed in caressing a strange wild
crop of hair, "I have lost my patterns, and
without my patterns, I am nobody—nothing
—the object of my journey is lost."

"Oh, you can easily get others," said the
young gentleman. "It is not worth while
making a row about that. But do tell us
something about the place where they shut
you up." The lively young diplomatist
assumed an air of awakened interest and
delight at the prospect which had thus
unexpectedly turned up, of supplying him with
amusing information upon a subject with
which he was unacquainted.

Mr. Gossop was abashed at this treatment;
he grew also irate, and his story became
confused. Wrathful, touzled, hungry red-eyed,
fresh from prison, that true-bred Briton was
quite a different person from the brisk, clear-
headed, well-trimmed little man, who vaunted
his wares with such a keen eye to the main
chance, only forty-eight hours before.

I tried to explain for him. Being myself
of a rather resigned and phlegmatic temperament,
and being, moreover, accustomed, from
frequent journeys through Mahommedan
countries, to take things coolly, I was not so
much affected by the indifferent board and
lodging which had been supplied to us on the
previous night by the Government of
Tombuctoo. I think the account I gave of what
had happened was plain and intelligible.

"You know you can have nothing to say
in the business," observed the lively young
gentleman with the wild hair. "It is Mr.
Toffy who makes the complaint."

"Gossop," said my companion.

"Well, Gollop, then," said the lively young
gentleman. "Upon my word, Mr. Gottop, I
think you had better forget all about it, and
leave Tombuctoo as soon as you can, for fear
they should lay hold of you again. You see
you were clearly in the wrong—"

"But you forget," I said, "that I was
stopped also; and, as a Government servant
carrying despatches, the consequences of such
an arrest might have been serious."

"Oh! If," said the young representative of
Britain, gaily; "If my aunt had whiskers
she would be my uncle."

"Stuff!" broke in another young gentleman,
who had been trying to fix a remarkably
obstinate eye-glass into his left eye. "Stuff,
Captain Bolt! Mr. Tiffin, the sub-vice-consul
at Dahomey, was stopped the other day. I
am afraid Huffey at the Foreign Office will
be very angry with you about this."

I had never heard of Huffey, and asked
meekly who he was.

"Don't you know Huffey, the chief clerk
of the Dahomey and Tombuctoo departments?
You had better go to him directly when you
get to London, and explain the affair privately."

"Explain what?" said I, rather disconcerted.

"Why, about your getting into this mess
with the police, and giving all this trouble."

"Oh indeed!" said I.

This was all that came of our complaint.
What befell my companion subsequently I
don't know; for it was plain that I had better
not keep company with such a dangerous
character, at Tombuctoo, during the glorious
mission of Lord Fiddlededee.

YOUR VERY GOOD HEALTH.

CERTAIN "Results of Sanitary Improvement"
have lately been published in a little
tract by that indefatigable and useful sanitary
reformer, Dr. Southwood Smith. We
repeat here some of the most striking, taking
them as we find them and leaving every man
to deduce from them his own conclusions.

First, as to the preventibleness of what is
called zymotic disease; of cholera, for instance.
Baltimore in the United States is a town with
nearly a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.
It is generally well built, but has low
and unwholesome districts near the river.
In the spring of eighteen hundred and forty-
nine, cholera was in America, and seemed to
be upon the way to Baltimore. The citizens
of that town spent, freely, both money and
labour to prepare themselves against the
threatened attack; they purified the town
thoroughly, and in the summer all agreed
that it never before had been so clean. About
the middle of June cholera was in the
surrounding towns, and there was in Baltimore
prevalent diarrhoea, with a strange vague
sense of oppression over the whole region of
the abdomen. "At that time," says the
medical officer of the city, "I felt assured
that the poison which produced cholera
pervaded the city; that it was brooding over us;
that we were already under its influence; and
I anticipated momentarily an outbreak of the
epidemic. In about two weeks, however, from
the commencement of this diarrhoea, and the
prevalence of the uneasy sensation which
accompanied it, these symptoms began to
subside, and in a short time they wholly
disappeared. Simultaneously with their
disappearance, cholera broke out at Richmond,