re we finally depart.'

Mr. Micawber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but he
put it in his tin pot and swallowed it.

'If you have any opportunity of sending letters home, on your passage,
Mrs. Micawber,' said my aunt, 'you must let us hear from you, you know.'

'My dear Miss Trotwood,' she replied, 'I shall only be too happy
to think that anyone expects to hear from us. I shall not fail to
correspond. Mr. Copperfield, I trust, as an old and familiar friend,
will not object to receive occasional intelligence, himself, from one
who knew him when the twins were yet unconscious?'

I said that I should hope to hear, whenever she had an opportunity of
writing.

'Please Heaven, there will be many such opportunities,' said Mr.
Micawber. 'The ocean, in these times, is a perfect fleet of ships; and
we can hardly fail to encounter many, in running over. It is merely
crossing,' said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass, 'merely
crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.'

I think, now, how odd it was, but how wonderfully like Mr. Micawber,
that, when he went from London to Canterbury, he should have talked as
if he were going to the farthest limits of the earth; and, when he went
from England to Australia, as if he were going for a little trip across
the channel.

'On the voyage, I shall endeavour,' said Mr. Micawber, 'occasionally
to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust,
be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs. Micawber has her
sea-legs on--an expression in which I hope there is no conventional
impropriety--she will give them, I dare say, "Little Tafflin". Porpoises
and dolphins, I believe, will be frequently observed athwart our
Bows; and, either on the starboard or the larboard quarter, objects of
interest will be continually descried. In short,' said Mr. Micawber,
with the old genteel air, 'the probability is, all will be found so
exciting, alow and aloft, that when the lookout, stationed in the
main-top, cries Land-oh! we shall be very considerably astonished!'

With that he flourished off the contents of his little tin pot, as if he
had made the voyage, and had passed a first-class examination before the
highest naval authorities.

'What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber,
'is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old
country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family,
but to our children's chi