"Atchew!—confusion! This pestilent country—atchew!—will be the death of me. ’Tis one eternal—-atchew!—rheum! Stap my vitals! I wish I were dead. Atchew! atchew!" Captain Aglionby sat in the topmost room of a high house in one of the less savoury quarters of the Hague. His nose was redder than ever; his cheeks more puffed; his eyes looked like boiled oysters. A thick woollen comforter swathed his neck. Though it was the height of summer, a big log fire blazed in the hearth; window and door were fast shut; and in a temperature of something over eighty degrees the captain was doing his best, according to his lights, to cure a cold. He was seated at a table drawn close to the fire. Upon the table stood a bottle nearly empty, a beaker, a basin of sugar, an inkhorn, a table-book of writing-paper, and a sheath containing quills. A kettle sang on the fire. When his sneezing fit was over, the captain poured the last of his rum into the beaker, sugared it, filled up with boiling water, and gulped half of the mixture into a throat inured to fiery passengers. Water streamed from his eyes, and his blotched brow broke into a profuse perspiration. He wiped his face with a large red handkerchief, smacked his lips, and, bending over the table, selected a quill. "Hang writing!" he muttered. "I never writ a letter but I rued it. Atchew! And with this cursed cold! Well, the sooner begun, the sooner done; so here’s to it. Atchew!" He cut his quill, dipped it in the ink, and began: "Mr. BARKLEY. Sir." It would have been quite evident to an onlooker that the captain was not a practised penman. He wrote very laboriously, frowning at every stroke, and licking his lips often. Like most illiterate people, he repeated half aloud the words as he wrote them, and being so unused to giving visible expression to his thoughts, he commented as he went along. He was never at a loss how to spell a word, for in those days men spelt as they pleased, and bad spelling might almost have been regarded as one of the marks of a gentleman.