Highly recommended by "The Faculty" (who has tried it more than once).
Given a perfectly calm sea, a delicious light breeze, and anything
else "given" that you can get, including pleasant company, then,
with tears in your patriotic eyes, and a tremolo in your voice, bid
farewell (for a couple of hours or so) to old England, cross the
Channel, invade France _viâ_ Calais, where, however calm the sea has
been, you must be prepared for a "buffet"; but this "buffet" is not at
all rough, just the contrary, and if by chance you should have at
all suffered from any unevenness in the wave line, you are sure, on
arriving at Calais, of a "restauration" which will send you back in
another hour and a half quite the giant refreshed. That same evening
you can pose as a real traveller just returned from "the Continent,"
which will serve you excellently both as reason and apology for
not having answered any letters, and neglected epistolary business
generally during the last month. "Been away, my boy!" "Ah, that's why
you didn't answer my letter. Where have you been?" "Oh! France, about
Normandy. Delightful. Ta! Ta!" And perhaps the expenditure of the
day's trip will have saved you from all sorts of trouble, pecuniary
and otherwise, that you might have got into had you remained at home,
answering letters. _But_, as to the benefit of the sea air--there
can't be two opinions about _that_.
* * * * *
A DISTINGUISHED COMMONER WHO CANNOT VOTE FOR DOING AWAY WITH
"LORD'S."--DR. GRACE. Public school elevens and M. C. C. all against
such a proposition.
* * * * *