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),