Oh dear! oh dear! What perils I have been through! You'll see me again shortly; but there have been _momentums_ in my career when I said to myself, "Shall I ever _aller_ out of this alive!" I escaped the Petersburg police; they punched out your Cartoon, and all the lines about the Czar and the Jews; that's why I was so persecuted, and why I was watched. I wish to Heaven you wouldn't have Cartoons about Czars and Jews just when I'm at Peterborough, I mean Petersburg; same name, different place. But there, that's all over now, and _jamais_ will I go and put myself within the clutches of the Russian Bear again. The midnight sun must do without _me_ in future. I send you a sketch I made of a gargle--I think that's the name--on a church-door in Lapland. Isn't it really droll? You're always bothering me for something droll, and _now you've got it_. Then, _Mr. Punch_, riding a reindeer at half-a-crown an hour. Then here are the little Lapps offering our sailors a lap of liquor; and I said to myself, "One touch of Nature," which struck me as just the very motto for the picture. I roared with laughter at it. "This'll do for 'em at home," I said, and so here it is. And look at the "Lapps of Luxury"! You know that "Lap of Luxury" is a proverbial phrase; and, as you told me to make some comic sketches of the manners and customs of the country, why, I've done so; and, if they ain't funny, I don't know what humour is. _Voilà!_ But you really must not expect me to grimace and buffoon. You must take me _seriatim_ or not at all. I can't stand on my head to sketch. I can't do it. I nearly _did_ do it, though, for when I had my sketching-book in my hand on board, the spanker-boom, or some such thing, came over suddenly and hit me such a whack on the head, that for two minutes I lay insensible, and thought I should never become sensible again. Rightly is it called "spanker-boom,"--that is if it _is_ called so, or some name very like it,--for I never got such a whack on the head in all my life before. I hear the Booming still in my ears. You can't expect a fellow to be funny, however funny he may _feel_ (and I _did_ feel uncommonly funny, you may take your oath!), under such circumstances. However, as the song says, "Home once more," and many a yarn shall I have to tell when I gather myself round the fireside, pipe all hands for grog, and sing you an old Norse song with real humour in it--though I dare say _you'll_ say you don't see it--and so no more _à présent_ from yours seasickly (I am quite well, but I mean I'm sick of the sea), FLOTSAM, Y.A. * * * * * JOURNAL OF A ROLLING STONE. FIFTH ENTRY. Curious thing that to-day--after disappointment of failure for the Bar--letter comes from President of my old College, asking me "if I would accept a nice Tutorship for a time?" If so, "I had better come down and talk to him about it."