ent, he mistook "ecstatic," a word he had never heard
before, for "erratic;" and recollecting sundry roving maniacs that he
had seen, he answered promptly--

"Despair, out and out."

"I knew it," said one.

"It's in nature," added a second.

"All can feel its truth," rejoined a third.

"This point may now be set down as established," cried Florio, "and I
hope no more will be said about it."

"This is encouragement to the searchers after truth," put in Captain
Kant.

"Pray, Hon. and Rev. Mr. Truck," asked Lucius Junius Brutus, at the
joint suggestion of Junius Brutus and Brutus, "does the Princess
Victoria smoke?"

"If she did not, sir, where would be the use in being a princess. I
suppose you know that all the tobacco seized in England, after a
deduction to informers, goes to the crown."

"I object to this usage," remarked Captain Kant, "as irreligious,
French, and tending to _sans-culotteism_. I am willing to admit of
this distinguished instance as an exception; but on all other
grounds, I shall maintain that it savours of infidelity to smoke. The
Prussian government, much the best of our times, never smokes."

"This man thinks he has a monopoly of the puffing, himself," Pindar
whispered into the captain's ear; "whiff away, my dear sir, and
you'll soon throw him into the shade."

The captain winked, drew out his box, lighted another cigar, and, by
way of reply to the envious remark, he put one in each corner of his
mouth, and soon had both in full blast, a state in which he kept them
for near a minute.

"This is the very picturesque of social enjoyment," exclaimed Florio,
holding up both hands in a glow of rapture. "It is absolutely
Homeric, in the way of usages! Ah! the English are a great nation!"

"I should like to know excessively if there was really such a person
as Baron Mun-chaw-sen?" said Julietta, gathering courage from the
success of her last question.

"There was, Miss," returned the captain, through his teeth, and
nodding his head in the affirmative. "A regular traveller, that; and
one who knew him well, swore to me that he hadn't related one half of
what befel him."

"How very delightful to learn this from the highest quarter!"
exclaimed Miss Monthly.

"Is Gatty (Goethe) really dead?" inquired Longinus, "or, is the
account we have had to that effect, merely a metaphysical apotheosis
of his mighty soul?"

"Dead, marm--stone dead--dead as a door-nail," returned the captain,
who saw a