opposite neighbour.

In half an hour, long before the trumpery apparatus counterfeiting the
shape of a fire-engine, or the water-buckets of the Corporation wrenched
from the custody of locks and iron gates, could be made to act, the old
chimney exhausted itself; and, at the moment when one unhappy
broken-winded engine spirted a small quantity of water into a window of
the first story only, the house having five stories, a column of clear
blue smoke shot straight up, from the chimney-pot into the air, with the
quietude and ease of a good joke. The chimney actually seemed to have
got up the smoke for a jest. The folks of Gottenborg, however, did not
view the matter in the same light as I did; for the bands of the
different regiments, that had been called together, by sound of trumpet,
to put out the fire, were mustered in a large square, and, in the
presence of a vast multitude, played a psalm, in token of the whole
nation's gratitude to Heaven, that Gottenborg had been spared the
ancient fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The wind veering round to the south, had blown the yacht farther from
the quay than when I left it in the morning. While conjecturing how I
should get on board, D---- came on deck, and said, _if_ I would jump, I
should find no difficulty in reaching the vessel. King Philip, of yore,
once wrote to the Lacedaemonians in the following manner:--"If I enter
your territories, I will destroy everything with fire and sword." To
this terrible menace, the Lacedaemonians answered only by the word, "If."
I certainly felt like a Lacedaemonian, and gave D---- credit for all the
confidence of the Macedonian monarch. I was rowed on board in the
jolly-boat.

A mob of many hundred persons surrounded the quay where the Iris was
moored, charmed by the symphony of Jerome's fiddle, or astounded by the
vociferous melody of the crew, as they tossed off a couplet or two of

"Rule Britannia!"

and then chanted with the recitative energy of truth,

"And there we lay, all the day,
In the Bay of Biscay, O!"

On Sunday morning, R---- and P---- returned, unexpectedly, from
Trolhaettan, and, when they entered the cabin, they were so powdered with
dust, and smeared with mud, that I hardly recognized them. They would
not, at first, tell me the cause of their dirty plight, but I contrived
to hear the whole account from King, who had accompanied them in the
capacity of valet. When they arrived at Trolhaettan, on Saturday
afternoon,