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Far be it from me to draw comparisons, but I if want to start well and wisely for the Continong, give me the short sea-passage via Dover and the excellent restauration at Calais, with a good twenty-five minutes allowed for refreshment; though why this interval shouldn’t be extended to three-quarters of an hour, and less time occupied on the journey to Paris, I have never yet been able to ascertain. In the not very dim and distant future no doubt it will be so.  I record the above observation in italics, in order to attract the attention of all whom it may and does and ought to concern.  Perhaps they’ll kindly see to it.

Our dejeuner at Calais is as good as it usually is at that haven of Restauration.  After the buffeting of the waves, how sweet is the buffet of the shore.  I sit down at once, as an old Continental-travelling hand, tell the waiter immediately what I am going to take, and forthwith it is brought; then, in advance, I command the coffee, and have my French money all ready in an outside-pocket, so that there shall be no unnecessary delay.  All station-feeding is a fearsome pastime.  You are never quite sure of the trains, and you never quite trust the waiter’s most solemn asseveration to the effect that you have still so many minutes left, decreasing rapidly from fifteen to five, when, time being up and the food down, you find yourself hurrying out on to the platform, plunging recklessly in between the lines, uncertain as to your carriage, and becoming more and more hot, nervous, and uncomfortable up to the very last moment, when the stout guard, with the heavy black moustache, and the familiar bronzed features set off by a cap-band which once was red, bundles you into your proper place, bangs the door, and you are off,—­for Paris, or wherever your destination may be.

DAUBINET knows the proprietor of the restaurant, likewise the proprietor’s good lady and good children.  He has a great deal to say to them, always by means of working the semaphore with his arms and hands, as if the persons with whom he excitedly converses were deaf; and having lost all count of time, besides being in a state of considerable puzzle as to the existence of his appetite, he is suddenly informed by the head-waiter,—­another of his acquaintances, for DAUBINET, it appears, is a constant traveller to and fro on this route, that if he wants, any thing he must take it at once, or he won’t get it at all, unless he chooses to stop there and lose his train.  So DAUBINET ladles some soup into his mouth, and savagely worries a huge lump of bread:  then having gobbled up the soup in a quarter of a second, and having put away all the bread in another quarter, he pours a glass of wine into a tumbler out of the bottle which I have had opened for both of us, adds water, then tosses it off, wipes his lips with the napkin which he bangs down on the table, and, with his hat and coat on, his small bag in his hand, and quite prepared to resume the journey, he cries, “Allons!  Petzikoff!” (or some such word, which I suppose to be either Russian or an ejaculation quite new and original, but a la Russe, and entirely his own invention), with the cheery and enthusiastic addition of, “Blass the Prince of WAILES!”