and with all the valuable contents of his
dressing-case in his pockets. I am not in a
condition to state whether he ever went
through the form of asking for his bill or
not; but I can positively testify that he
never paid it, and that the effects left in his
bedroom did not pay it either. When I add
to these fragments of evidence, that he and I
have never met (luckily for me), since I
jockeyed him out of his bank note, I have
about fulfilled my implied contract as maker
of a statement, with the present company as
hearers of a statement.

THE FIFTH POOR TRAVELLER.

Do you know — the journeyman watchmaker
from Geneva began—do you know
those long straight lines of French country,
over which I have often walked? Do you
know those rivers so long, so uniform in
breadth, so dully gray in hue, that in despair at
their regularity, you momentarily libel nature
as being only a grand canal commissioner
after all? Do you know the long funereal
rows of poplars, or dreary parallelograms of
osiers, that fringe those river banks; the
long white roads, hedgeless, but, oh! so dismally
ditchful; the long, low stone walls;
the long farmhouses, without a spark of the
robust, leafy, cheerful life of the English
homesteads; the long fields, scarcely evergreen,
but of an ashen tone, wearily furrowed,
as though the earth had grown old
and was beginning to show the crow's feet;
the long, interminable gray French landscape?
The sky itself seems longer than it
ought to be; and the clouds stretch away to
goodness knows where in long low banks, as if
the heavens had been ruled with a parallel.
If a vehicle passes you it is only a wofully
long diligence, lengthened yellow ugliness
long drawn out, with a seemingly endless team
of horses, and a long, stifling cloud of dust
behind it: a driver for the wheelers with a
whip seven times as long as it ought to be;
and a postilion for the leaders with boots
long enough for seven-leaguers. His oaths
are long; the horses' manes are long; their
tails are so long that they are obliged to
have them tied up with straw. The stages
are long, the journey long, the fares long—
the whole longitudinal carriage leaves a long
melancholy jingle of bells behind it.

Yes: French scenery is very lengthy; so
I settled in my mind at least, as I walked
with long strides along the white French
road. A longer me—my shadow—walked
before me, bending its back and drooping its
arms, and angularising its elongated legs
like drowsy compasses. The shadow looked
tired: I felt so. I had been oppressed
by length all day. I had passed a long procession—
some hundreds of boys in gray
great coats and red trowsers: soldiers. I
had found their guns and bayonets too long,
their coats disproportionately lengthy; the
moustaches of their officers ridiculously
elongated. There was no end of them—their
rolling drums, baggage waggons, and led
horses. I had passed a team of bullocks
ploughing: they looked as long as the lane
that hath no turning. A long man followed
them smoking a long pipe. A wretched pig
I saw, too—a long, lean, bristly, lanky-legged
monstrosity, without even a curly tail, for his
tail was long and pendent; a miserable pig,
half-snouted greyhound, half-abashed weazel,
whole hog, and an eyesore to me. I was a
long way from home. I had the spleen. I
wanted something short—not to drink, but
a short break in the long landscape, a house,
a knoll, a clump of trees—anything to relieve
this long purgatory.

Whenever I feel inclined to take a more than
ordinarily dismal view of things, I find it expedient
to take a pipe of tobacco instead. As
I wanted to rest, however, as well as smoke,
I had to walk another long mile. When I
descried a house, in front thereof was a huge
felled tree, and on the tree I sat and lighted
my pipe. The day was of no particular character
whatever: neither wet nor dry, cold nor
hot—neither springy, summery, autumnal, nor
wintry.

The house I was sitting opposite to, might
have been one of public entertainment (for
it was a cabaret) if there had been any
public in the neighbourhood to be entertained,
which (myself excepted) I considered
doubtful. It seemed to me as if
Bacchus, roving about on the loose, had
dropped a stray tub here on the solitary road,
and no longer coming that way, the tub itself
had gone to decay—had become unhooped
mouldy, leaky. I declare that, saving
a certain fanciful resemblance to the barrel
on which the god of wine is generally
supposed to take horse exercise, the house
had no more shape than a lump of cheese
that one might dig hap-hazard from a soft,
double Gloucester. The windows were patches
and the doorway had evidently been made
subsequently to the erection of the building,
and looked like an excrescence as it was. The
top of the house had been pelted with mud,
thatch, tiles, and slates, rather than roofed;
and a top room jutted out laterally from one of
the walls, supported beneath by crazy uprights,
like a poor relation clinging to a genteel kinsman
nearly as poor. The walls had been plastered
once, but the plaster had peeled off in
places, and  mud and wattles peeped through
like a beggar's bare knee through his
torn trowsers. An anomalous wooden ruin,
that might have been a barrel in the
beginning, then a dog-kennel, then a dustbin,
then a hen-coop, seemed fast approximating
(eked out by some rotten palings and
half a deal box) to a pigstye: perhaps my
enemy the long pig with the pendent tail
lived there when he was at home. A lively
old birch-broom, senile but twiggy, thriving
under a kindly manure of broken bottles and