for they have plenty of custom at their own prices.  In fact, being in a steamboat is a species of personal incarceration, and you have only the option between bringing your own prog, or taking theirs at whatever they choose to charge—­unless, indeed, a person prefers going without any.  Jorrocks took nothing.  He laid down again after the Queen had passed, and never looked up until we were a mile or two off Herne Bay.

With the reader’s permission, we will suppose that we have just landed, and, bags in hand, ascended the flight of steps that conduct passengers, as it were, from the briny ocean on to the stage of life.

“My eyes!” said Jorrocks, as he reached the top, “wot a pier, and wot a bit of a place!  Why, there don’t seem to be fifty houses altogether, reckoning the windmill in the centre as one.  What’s this thing?” said he to a ticket-porter, pointing to a sort of French diligence-looking concern which had just been pushed up to the landing end.  “To carry the lumber, sir—­live and dead—­gentlemen and their bags, as don’t like to walk.”  “Do you charge anything for the ride?” inquired Jorrocks, with his customary caution.  “Nothing,” was the answer.  “Then, let’s get on the roof,” said J——­, “and take it easy, and survey the place as we go along.”  So, accordingly, we clambered on to the top of the diligence, “summa diligentia,” and seated ourselves on a pile of luggage; being all stowed away, and as many passengers as it would hold put inside, two or three porters proceeded to propel the machine along the railroad on which it runs.  “Now, Mr. Yorkshireman,” said Jorrocks, “we are in a strange land, and it behoves us to proceed with caution, or we may spend our five pounds seven and sixpence before we know where we are.”

Yorkshireman.  Seven and ninepence it is, sir.

Jorrocks.  Well, be it so—­five pounds seven and ninepence between two, is by no means an impossible sum to spend, and the trick is to make it go as far as we can.  Now some men can make one guinea go as far as others can make two, and we will try what we can do.  In the first place, you know I makes it a rule never to darken the door of a place wot calls itself an ’otel, for ’otel prices and inn prices are werry different.  You young chaps don’t consider these things, and as long as you have got a rap in the world you go swaggering about, ordering claret and waxlights, and everything wot’s expensive, as though you must spend money because you are in an inn.  Now, that’s all gammon.  If a man haven’t got money he can’t spend it; and we all know that many poor folks are obliged at times to go to houses of public entertainment, and you don’t suppose that they pay for fire and waxlights, private sitting-rooms, and all them ’ere sort of things.  Now, said he, adjusting his hunting telescope and raking the town of Herne Bay, towards which we were gently approaching on our dignified eminence, but as yet had not got near enough to descry “what was what” with