putting the other into their pockets. A hundred people or so
contributed nine hundred pounds then and there.

[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]

VILLA DES MOULINEAUX, BOULOGNE,
_Sunday, June 15th 1856._

MY DEAR OLD BOY,

This place is beautiful--a burst of roses. Your friend Beaucourt (who
_will not_ put on his hat), has thinned the trees and greatly improved
the garden. Upon my life, I believe there are at least twenty distinct
smoking-spots expressly made in it.

And as soon as you can see your day in next month for coming over with
Stanny and Webster, will you let them both know? I should not be very
much surprised if I were to come over and fetch you, when I know what
your day is. Indeed, I don't see how you could get across properly
without me.

There is a fete here to-night in honour of the Imperial baptism, and
there will be another to-morrow. The Plorn has put on two bits of ribbon
(one pink and one blue), which he calls "companys," to celebrate the
occasion. The fact that the receipts of the fetes are to be given to the
sufferers by the late floods reminds me that you will find at the
passport office a tin-box, condescendingly and considerately labelled in
English:

FOR THE OVERFLOWINGS,

which the chief officer clearly believes to mean, for the sufferers from
the inundations.

I observe more Mingles in the laundresses' shops, and one inscription,
which looks like the name of a duet or chorus in a playbill, "Here they
mingle."

Will you congratulate Mrs. Lemon, with our loves, on her gallant victory
over the recreant cabman?

Walter has turned up, rather brilliant on the whole; and that (with
shoals of remembrances and messages which I don't deliver) is all my
present intelligence.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]

H. W. OFFICE, _July 2nd, 1856._

MY DEAR MARK,

I am concerned to hear that you are ill, that you sit down before fires
and shiver, and that you have stated times for doing so, like the demons
in the melodramas, and that you mean to take a week to get well in.

Make haste about it, like a dear fellow, and keep up your spirits,
because I have made a bargain with Stanny and Webster that they shall
come to Boulogne to-morrow week, Thursday the 10th, and stay a week. And
you know how mu