DEAR B.,--I wish you would please to say something about them nasty men what smokes about. I took my daughter to Market last week in the _Columbine_ packet, and there not only did the ship smoke, but almost every man had either a pipe or a seagar in his mouth. I made a little fox pos on board, for I was so sick of the smoking that one of the men said I had better go and sit with the engineers, for let it be ever so hot they were used to it and never smoked. Now when we was living on Blackheath, poor Mr. Ram used to ask several of the engineers to dine with us, which always come in a pretty uniform of scarlet, with blue velvet facings, and which I knowed to be a genteel corpse, because there were not no men in it, but all officers. So I asked the gentlemen who talked of the engineers to show me the way to them, thinking perhaps I might see some of my old friends down there, but when I got into the place, which was like a firnest, what should I see but two or three men without their coats, with airy caps on their heads and dirty faces, a shovelling in coles like anything--and when I come down they laughed at me and asked if I wanted to be roasted. I soon found out they was different people from what I thought, and a gentleman who helped me up out of the hole were they was a grubbing, told me the difference was that the dirty men were civil engineers, which I could by no means agree to--for I thought them uncommon rude. When I got up stairs again, I was sick of the smoking, and so I went into the cabin, where there were more smokers--in short, dear B., whether I travels by land or by water, still I am smoked to death--it is a most horrid custom, and, perhaps, if you notice it, some on 'em will leave it off. I will rite again when we are settled.--Yours truly, L. D. RAMSBOTTOM. XVI. MRS. RAMSBOTTOM'S CONUNDRUMS. TO JOHN BULL. Montague Place, Dec. 28, 1827. DEAR B.,--I never like to fail writing to you at this season, but I don't like puttin you to the expense of postage; and yet, when I hear of any thing peakant, I wish to send it you. You must know that me and all the gulls have taken to making knundrums, as they call them, and what we can't make, we collex. We got the idear from having purchased some of the hannual perodicals. I boght the Omelet, and Lavinia boght the Bougie, and they set us upon putting knundrums into our Albions. It being Christmas, and it coming but once a year, I have sent you some of ours, which perhaps you won't print, but may serve to make you laugh. What three letters spell Archipelago--(what that is I don't know; but this is the answer)--E. G. and C. Why is a man about to put his father in a sack like a traveller on his way to a city in Asia?--Because he is going to _Bag Dad_. Why is a child with a cold in its head like a winter's night?--Because "it blows, it snows."--(nose, you know.)