ourselves up in opposition to the practices of
everybody else in the place? That was what
Mrs. Prowles, of the Library (that library to
which we did not subscribe) would like to
know.

Other people lived in the terraces facing
the sea. Why did we go and poke ourselves
up in a little house at the back of the town,
for which we paid just as much as we should
have done for one on the Parade.

My dear half-brother, Chowler, is a thoughtful
man, and a studious. He is engaged on
the fifth volume of his well-known work on
the habits of the shrimp, including an argument
as to the precise nature of the jellyfish
and its claims to rank rather among the
brachiopodous molluscs, than the lammariferous
zoophytes of the British Islands. Naturally
enough he wishes to investigate this subject
in quiet and retirement. So going down
to Smallport to reconnoitre before he finally
settles himself, he notes that at the houses on
the Parade facing the sea the noises cease
not. He notes that the alternate dirge
and polka of the brazen band is closely
followed by the itinerant organ, which again
is relieved by the wandering minstrel of
the Tyrol, and anon by the serenader of
Ethiop.

Examining the back regions of the town,
my half-brother, Chowler—my name is
Trotter; and as we often speak of each
other as brothers, dropping the objectionable
word "half": Mrs. Prowles, of the Library,
is much mystified as to our relationship
—my dear brother, I say, wandering about the
town in search of a quiet spot, comes upon a
little row of four houses called Prospect Place,
and looking on the dead wall at the back of
the brewery. And here, in parenthesis, the
author of these pages would wish to advertise
and proclaim his desire to be put in
instant communication with any person or
persons who do at this present time know, or
ever have known, of any row or rows of
houses, or tenements bearing the name of
Prospect Place, and having any prospect
whatsoever. Prospect Place looked out, then,
on the back of the brewery; but it was quiet
and that was why we did not live like other
people, on the Marine Parade.

"Why didn't we take our meals at the
times when other people did?"

For, bless your heart, not only when we
dined was known, but everything that we
had, and a great deal that we hadn't, for
dinner. And when our dear friend Purkis,
with his usual thoughtful kindness, brought
us down a present of a delicious haunch of
venison—and we are ready for another, dear
Purkis, when convenient—it was known all
over the town directly, though how they
found it out, I can't imagine. I am sure
there was no smell to speak of till the day
we had the last hash, and the Smallport
public knew all about it three days before
that.

"Why didn't we take our meals at
times when other people did?"

Everybody at Smallport dined in the
middle of the day; and so did we—once.
And why did we not continue the practice?
Because it is not good, dear sir, to rise from
a meal at which you have only drank your
pint of bitter ale, and your two glasses of
the standard or natural sherry, feeling in a
giddy state of intoxication, and unfit for the
rest of the day for any of the ordinary
occupations of humanity. Because it is not good
to flush across the bridge of the nose—an
invariable result of dining in the middle of
the day—and to feel coarse and brutal, and
criminal. For the present writer is of
opinion that a distinct tendency to great
crimes is developed by early dinners, and
that about two hours after such meals no
act of villany is either surprising or
blameworthy.

"Why didn't we dine in the middle of the
day?"

Does the reader wish for more reasons?
Is it good to feel at half-past four that life is
a burden? Go to! Is it good to remember
at six, that now, if we had not dined at half-
past one, we should be sitting down to a
sociable and elegant repast; and with such
a recollection strong upon one, to approach a
board spread with tea-things and new bread
and tepid butter, and ignoble shrimps? Go
to! Is it good feeling exhausted at ten at
night, to send out in desperation for a lobster,
eking out the meal with cucumber and
toasted cheese? Go to! Is it good, dear sir,
of my soul, for me to go to bed on these
things, and at one in the morning to dream
that I have murdered Purkis; that I am
ordered for execution without so much as a
trial; that a file of soldiers is drawn out
with their muskets pointed dead at me, that
these engines of destruction go off, that my
head explodes, and that I start up in bed
with the crash, expecting to find my brains
upon the pillow; are these things good, and
shall I again be found dining in the middle
of the day? No, dear sir, I think not: not
if I know it.

Again, the determination taken by my
half-brother Chowler, and our friend Purkis,
to hire a lugger and to make in it the cruise
to Dunkerque and back (an account of which
cruise will, by the bye, be found in another
portion of this journal), this harmless
intention of theirs was commented upon as a
sulky and supercilious proceeding, and made
a ground of objection against us.

It was some time after the conclusion of
that memorable adventure, that I was standing
one hot afternoon on the little pier at
Smallport, which (the qualities I have
mentioned excepted) is as pleasant a little sea-
side village as you will meet with; I was
standing at the end of the little jetty, and
looking into the clear green water, when I
suddenly found myself surrounded by a party,