heir progress, had subsided,
we had all relapsed into our former state of apathy and sullenness. A
duller or staider set I never saw outside a Quakers' meeting. Still the
beggars eat, as when does a cockney not in the open air? The stewards of
these steamboats must make a rare thing of their places, for they have
plenty of custom at their own prices. In fact, being in a steamboat is a
species of personal incarceration, and you have only the option between
bringing your own prog, or taking theirs at whatever they choose to
charge--unless, indeed, a person prefers going without any. Jorrocks
took nothing. He laid down again after the Queen had passed, and never
looked up until we were a mile or two off Herne Bay.

With the reader's permission, we will suppose that we have just landed,
and, bags in hand, ascended the flight of steps that conduct passengers,
as it were, from the briny ocean on to the stage of life.

"My eyes!" said Jorrocks, as he reached the top, "wot a pier, and wot
a bit of a place! Why, there don't seem to be fifty houses altogether,
reckoning the windmill in the centre as one. What's this thing?" said
he to a ticket-porter, pointing to a sort of French diligence-looking
concern which had just been pushed up to the landing end. "To carry the
lumber, sir--live and dead--gentlemen and their bags, as don't like to
walk." "Do you charge anything for the ride?" inquired Jorrocks, with
his customary caution. "Nothing," was the answer. "Then, let's get on
the roof," said J----, "and take it easy, and survey the place as we go
along." So, accordingly, we clambered on to the top of the diligence,
"summa diligentia," and seated ourselves on a pile of luggage; being all
stowed away, and as many passengers as it would hold put inside, two
or three porters proceeded to propel the machine along the railroad on
which it runs. "Now, Mr. Yorkshireman," said Jorrocks, "we are in a
strange land, and it behoves us to proceed with caution, or we may spend
our five pounds seven and sixpence before we know where we are."

_Yorkshireman_. Seven and ninepence it is, sir.

_Jorrocks_. Well, be it so--five pounds seven and ninepence between two,
is by no means an impossible sum to spend, and the trick is to make
it go as far as we can. Now some men can make one guinea go as far as
others can make two, and we will try what we can do. In the first place,
you know I makes it a rule never to darken the door of a place wot calls
it