“As we entered the port of Ostend, once so celebrated for the defence of its garrison, a salute of thirteen guns was fired from the old fort, which we attempted to answer with a rusty swivel, Buck waving his hat, and singing ‘Yankee Doodle’ to the burghers who filed along the dilapidated dyke.  As the steamer neared a landing-place, we descried the coarse figure of Corporal Noggs, surrounded by numerous of his fellow citizens, prominent among whom was Monsieur Souley and the Chevalier Belmont.  In addition to these welcoming spirits, there came also a Dutch band, which, ere we had made fast alongside, struck up something they intended for Hail, Columbia! The reader will please appeal to his imagination as to what our reception must have been, when I tell him that shouts and huzzas, interspersed with this discordant ‘Hail Columbia!’ rent the very air, and made faint the roaring of the steam from the funnel of our little craft.  Boxes one, two, and three, were now sent forward under an escort to the hotel, while a triumphal chair secured to two long poles was placed in proper order for the reception of my friend Buck.  Rather against his inclination, and not without expressing some doubt as to the propriety of displaying so much pageantry in a foreign country, was he packed into it by Monsieurs Souley and Belmont.  Corporal Noggs now formed in order the procession, which moved in state through the city, headed by the band playing the ‘Rogue’s March,’ which it mistook for ’Yankee Doodle.’  Such a funny procession!  The reader may imagine the figure cut by my venerable friend, when I tell him that the triumphal chair was borne on the shoulders of Monsieurs Souley, Belmont, Daniels, and O’Sullivan—­the two former being in the lead.  Close in the rear of the chair, your humble servant, Smooth, took up his position, riding a female jackass, an animal domesticated by Monsieur Souley, under whose saddle she had borne up until the flesh was nearly off her bones.  This was tapered off with an everlasting string of seedy citizens, for whom an innumerable quantity of goats seemed to have a fellow sympathy, so close did they follow.  At the hotel, from the balcony of which streamed the stars and stripes, the uproar and confusion was beyond description.  Could some of the old burghers have risen from the tomb, they might have imagined a modern siege of that city they so nobly defended in times gone by.  Staggering and sweating, the four envoys bore their precious burden to the great porch, whence he was escorted to the balcony, upon which he stood, like a Roman of old, and, by the advice of Monsieur Souley, delivered a stunning speech, that versatile functionary translating it into Dutch.  It will scarcely be necessary to add that the speech proved a decided hit, and was received with shouts and acclamations.  Not a little done over, the old statesman was now regaled on delicious krout and gin-slings, and put carefully to bed by a Dutch chambermaid.  This was at three o’clock in the afternoon.  At seven I marshalled all hands for a grand banquet, which had been prepared without any regard to expense, it being intimated that Uncle Sam would settle for the whole thing.