I had to change carriages at Canterbury in order to get to Updown, which was twelve miles distant from that city. I felt as lonely as a German who can’t speak a word of English, and who must either make his way from Leicester Square to Mile End Gate, or starve. A guard took me for a foreigner, perhaps a fire-worshipper, because I had to get him to repeat a question three times before I had the faintest idea of his meaning. I will put it to the most intelligent of my readers--if a man with a face like the countenance of a skate, were to thrust his head into a window and roar with a voice turbid with hops, “F-r-sh-f-rd-s-r!” what would you think? Would you call for the police; or fall back, and resignedly give yourself up for lost? What I gathered after a bold and narrow cross-examination was, that the man, who enjoyed his right senses, wanted an answer to this question: “Are you for Ashford, sir?” Considering that I look as much an Englishman as blue eyes, a fair complexion, and a yellow, or auburn, or red, or tawny (take your choice; they all mean one colour) mustache can make a man; and considering, moreover, that I could articulate the national dialect in a manner Dr. Johnson himself--his immortal name, I am proud to say, heads chapter one--would have held unimpeachable, I maintain that I had a right to consider myself aggrieved, by being set down as a foreigner, by a man who looked like a fish, and spoke like a Yahoo. Ever since that day I have possessed, and I hope I shall always preserve, an unaffected sympathy with foreigners travelling in England. No wonder Alphonse Tassard, after a fortnight’s trip to Great Britain--he having set out with the intention of returning in four days--swore with many wild and awful imprecations, that he would rather travel round Dante’s fearful circles, than make a tour in Albion. For, had not a London cabman taken him to the North-Western Railway Station instead of to the South-Eastern Railway Station; and had not a _sot_ put him into a carriage that whirled him into the furnaces of the Black Country, instead of to the southern port, whence he had hoped to embark for his hair-dressing establishment in the Rue de Poitrine? The train stopped at Updown station, and out I jumped, leaving behind me, in my eagerness to escape from being carried any further, a new silk umbrella with an ivory handle. (This is intended to meet the eye of a melancholy looking man who sat opposite to me.) My portmanteau, which might have been full of priceless Dresden ware for anything the guard knew, was hurled out of the van on to the platform, where it gave a bound and stood upright, the engine screeched, off went the train, and I was left staring at a short man with a waistcoat that descended considerably below his middle, who, on catching my eye, fell to poking his forehead rapidly with his thumb. “Mr. Hargrave, sir?” said he interrogatively. “That’s my name,” I answered.