would never do. The exception at last in
favour of a very mild, inoffensive, blue-eyed
pupil of the engineer corps is made; ostensibly
on the ground of the cherry-coloured
cornet waiving his objections, on the score of
not wishing to disturb the harmony of the
evening — which was the morning of the
next day. Nobody makes any objection to
me, though I am in plain black, am not a
Tchinovnik — nay, not even a cadet in the
engineer corps; but I am simply an Angliski
who can talk and smoke with, and be asked
questions by them. So we go away gaily in
a gondola (for which we have to pay an
enormous fare), and in due time land at
Christoffsky, I sitting among these jovial
young nobles, as Gubetta sat among the
Orsinis and Gazellas in the play — they
little wotting that Donna Lucrezia Borgia
was waiting for me, in the shape of a
printing-press at home. They would have
thrown me out of the boat had they known
that, I think.

The high jinks fully answer our expectations:
they are exceedingly high. The immense
expanse of green sward is covered with an
encampment of gipsy-like tents — some white,
some black, some red, some striped in white
and blue. There are other tents, or rather
wigwams, constructed of branches covered in
with green leaves, beneath whose verdant
covering some fat German children in the
wood are smoking and drinking and snoring.
There are some more fortunate members of
the class the Russians so contemptuously
designate as "Ganz Deutsch," who display a
degree of luxury, almost amounting to ostentation,
in the temporary edifices they have
erected to have their orgies and their Midsummer
madness in. These are quite pavilions,
the canvas of gay colours, looped and
fringed, and banners waving from the
apex of the conical roof. There are many
simple bivouacs, belonging probably to
artisans too poor to have tents, and who
squat in a circle — always smoking, drinking,
and occasionally howling, round a tremendous
bonfire of green wood, which crackles and
blazes and fumes in approved gipsy fashion.
But, in place of the time-honoured pot containing
the surreptitiously-obtained supper
of the Zingari — the stolen fowls, the purloined
turkeys, the snared pheasants, and the ill-gotten
rabbits, with other dishonestly-annexed
addenda in the way of vegetables, which go
towards furnishing forth the hot supper of a
British Bohemian, — instead of the pot, suspended
by a triangle and a hook over the
blaze, we have here in every case the
samovar: big, brazen, and battered. As to
its serving for purposes of tea-making at this
German carousal, I strenuously and determinedly
disbelieve it. It is punch,! sir—hot
punch  —  punch made not of cognac, made not
of Jamaica rum or Irish whisky  —  though
both are to be obtained (at an enormous
price) in Russia — made not even from the
native Vodki; but, brewed from the hot,
potent, dark-coloured Brantwein of Deutschland
the beloved; especially imported, or
smuggled, through the custom-house, which
comes in the main to the same thing, for the
festivities, otherwise high jinks, of Christoffsky.

To give you a notion of the crowds of
persons of both sexes, of all ages, and, apparently
of all conditions, who are sprawling,
or tumbling, or leaping, or dancing about this
"green isle," would be difficult, if not impossible.
To give you a notion of the great
circles, formed, I thought at first, for kiss-in-the-ring,
but, I soon discovered, for waltzes
and quadrilles; of the debauched Germans
lying about, dead drunk, or rushing about
mad drunk; of hunchbacks, with bottles of
liquor, capering up to you, with strange
mouthings and writhings; of the roaring
choruses, the discordant music, the Punch's
shows — Punch's shows in Russia! — the acrobats,
the dancing dogs and monkeys, the
conjurors, the gambling tables, the Russian
moujiks, not mingling among the revellers
to revel with them, but to sell quass, tea,
meat pies, hard eggs, and salted cucumbers;
to see all this made you dizzy, almost
drunk. And the swings, and the roundabouts,
and the grey-coated Polizeis, ever
watchful, ever ruthless, making savage
forays on the revellers, and conveying them
to prison, there to learn that their evening's
amusement would not bear the morning's
reflection.

We did not return from Christoffsky by
water, but in several droschkies — there is a
bridge uniting the scene of the high jinks to
Wassily Ostrow — and for which droschkies,
in their severality, we had to pay several
roubles. Going to bed at about six o'clock,
very tired and worn out, I fell into a weary
sleep, and dreamt that I had been to Greenwich
Fair at night, having been at the Derby
all day, and having seen the masque of
Comus the night before. Which is about the
best notion I can give of the high jinks at
Christoffsky.

Now ready, in Twenty-eight pages, stitched, Price
Fourpence, the HOUSEHOLD WORDS ALMANAC for
the Year 1857. Also, price Threepence, or stamped
Fourpence,

THE
WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY:

Being the CAPTAIN'S ACCOUNT of the LOSS OF
THE SHIP, and the MATE'S ACCOUNT of the GREAT DELIVERANCE OF HER PEOPLE IN AN OPEN
BOAT AT SEA; forming THE CHRISTMAS NUMBER
of HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

THE NEW VOLUME of Household Words, price 5s. 6d.,
is now ready.