I can manage to keep afloat for a couple of weeks, but be sure to remit me something by that time. Yours, ever sincerely, Kenny I. Dodd. LETTER XIV. JAMES DODD TO ROBERT DOOLAN, ESQ., TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. Liège, Tuesday Morning. My dear Bob,--A thousand pardons for not answering either of your two last letters. It was not, believe me, that I have not felt the most sincere interest in all that you tell me about yourself and your doings. Far from it: I finished two bottles of Hock in honor of your Science Premium, and I have called a short-tailed hack Bob, after you, though, unfortunately, she happens to be a mare. Mine has been rather a varied kind of existence since I wrote last. A little in the draught-board style, only that the black checkers have rather predominated! I got "hit hard" at the Brussels races, lost twelve hundred at écarté, and had some ugly misadventures arising out of a too liberal use of my autograph. The governor, however, has stumped up, and though the whole affair was serious enough at one time, I fancy that we are at length over the stiff country, and with nothing but grass fields and light cantering laud before us. The greatest inconvenience of the whole has been that we 've been laid up here, "dismasted and in ordinary," for the last three weeks, during which my mother has made a steeple-chase through the Pharmacopoeia, and the governor finished all the Schiedam in the town. In fact, there has been nothing very serious the matter with her; but as we left the capital under rather unpleasant circumstances, we came in here to "blow off our steam," and cool down to a reasonable temperature. To reduce the budget and retrench expenditure, the choice was probably not a bad one, since we are housed, fed, and done for on the most reasonable terms; but the place is a perfect disgust, and there is actually nothing for a man to do, except to poke into steam-engines and prove gun-barrels. As for me, I never leave my room from breakfast till _table d'hôte_ hour. My French master comes at eleven and stays till four. This sounds all very diligent and studious, and so thinks the governor, Bob. The real state of the case is, however, different. The distinguished officer of the Old Guard engaged to instruct me in military science and mathematics is an old hairdresser, who combines with his functions of barber the honorable duties of _laquais de place_ and police spy, occasionally taking a turn at the "scholastic" whenever he is lucky enough to find any English illiterate enough to be his dupes. The governor heard of him from the master of the hotel, and took him especially for his cheapness. Such is the Captain de la Bourdonaye, who swaggers upstairs every morning with a red ribbon in his button-hole, and a curling-iron in his pocket; for I take good care, Bob, that as he cannot furnish the inside of my head, he shall at least decorate it without.