charges: I have been in charge of old ladies,
maiden aunts, and such-like antique virgins,
whom I have uncomplainingly escorted to
Exeter Hall oratorios, scientific lectures, and
other uproarious dissipations provided for the
pleasure-seeking feeble. I have been in charge
of pretty cousins, and pretty girls not cousins, at
the Zoological and Botanic Gardens, at pic-nic
parties and aquatic excursions. I have been in
charge of a man with a letter of introduc-
tion from a friend in the country, a dreadful
person.

But now, at seven o'clock on a March night,
I have a charge of great responsibility. As
I stand upon the platform of the London-
bridge station, looking upon my interesting
charge, which is arriving in relays, I begin to
feel its importance, and a slight inward qual-
mishness lest anything should go wrong. Let
me lose but one of these square tin boxes;
and the war-worn soldier, who for months
has manfully baffled the attacks of an in-
sidious climate and a bloodthirsty enemy, and
whose long watches, forced marches, and pro-
tracted exposure to heat and damp, have been
cheered by the thought that those loved ones at
home still wore him in their hearts and remembered
him in their prayers, will droop and pine at their
supposed neglect. If I even be retarded in my mis-
sion, it may chance that the senior partner in the
great Calcutta house of Roupee, Anna, Pice, and
Company, finding that his pressing letters to his
English correspondents remain unanswered, and
that no advices of remittances have arrived, will
retire to his elegant house at Ballygunge, where
thirty crawling servants tremble at his frown, and,
putting a pistol to his head, will terminate a career
of fifty hard-working, anxious years. I am " Mes-
senger in the service of her Britannic Majesty,
charged with the despatches and mails of her
Majesty's Post-office, proceeding to Alexandria,
via Marseilles;" and, if the wearing of a
cap with a red band and a V.R. and crown,
worked in gold twist, and the slinging round
my body of a black leather despatch-case,
adorned with the aforenamed V.R. and the
words " Officer in charge of Indian Mail"—if
these, I say, constitute an official " swell," that
swell am I.

The London-bridge station is so familiar
to me, that my presence there seems quite
an ordinary matter, and scarcely helps me to
realise the object of my mission. I have
seen my interesting charge, consisting of
seventy-eight boxes, addressed to various parts
of the Eastern world, securely locked in a van,
and have settled myself comfortably in the
corner of a first-class carriage, when I find my
costume and equipments begin to make an im-
pression. Two young ladies sitting opposite
to me are evidently hit by the military cap
and the gold twisted V.R. and crown, coupling
which with the fact of my wearing a moustache,
one of the girls, in a stifled, but audible whisper,
communicates to her friend her belief that
I am an "officer." Knowing this to be the
grandest earthly position in girlhood's dream, I
feel proportionately proud, but immediately sink
horribly in my self-esteem, when the friend, after
a critical scrutiny, pronounces in the same
whisper the word "Militia!" In the mean
time, an old gentleman, sitting at my right
has been taking stock of me, under cover of
his newspaper, and has been going through
a course of acrobatical evolutions in his en-
deavours to make out the gilt letters on my
despatch-case. At last he hands me his news-
paper with a benevolent smirk, remarking,
with a sweeping and comprehensive glance
which takes in the top of my cap and the soles of
my boots, that " it will probably be some time
before I see another English journal!" He takes
me for a Queen's messenger. "Wonderful
profession; here, there, and everywhere; quite
realises the motto of the marines, Per mare, per
terrain; I may almost say, Hic et ubique."
I then fall asleep, and am aroused by the guard's
asking for my ticket at Dover.

Scarcely have I set foot upon the platform of
the Dover station, before I am seized upon by
an active gentleman, who informs me that he is
the postmaster, and, clapping a pen into one of
my hands, and a printed time-bill into the other,
begs me to make an entry of the number of my
boxes. Propping the document against the wall,
I comply, and, on turning round, see a dozen
men flinging themselves into the van containing
the sacred deposit, and bearing it off piecemeal.
I follow in their wake across the dark road, at
the corner of which the Lord Warden stretches
out his broad arms hospitably, and invites me to
linger, past the line of harbour-skirting, white-
faced hotels, and down to the Admiralty pier.
Here lies the Ondine, her passengers on board,
her steam up, nobody but me waited for.

The importance of my charge has no effect
upon the Channel passage, which is exactly the
same as usual. Having seen my boxes piled
round the funnel, I descend, for refreshment
purposes, to the cabin, already filled with groan-
ing black bundles, containing the bodies of
foreigners. I eat my sandwiches and drink my
brandy-and-water in the steward's sanctum,
surrounded by rattling glasses and clanking
plates, and return, to the deck to smoke my
cigar. There, huddling under the lee of the
chimney (for the wind is blowing stiffly by this
time), I find a French lady and gentleman in
that dreadful stage of forced mirth which, on
board ship, is the immediate precursor of violent
illness. At every roll of the little boat the
gentleman laughs in an ecstatic but unnatural
manner; at every pitch, the lady screams with
terror, not entirely feigned. But they both
bear up bravely, lastly profess themselves-
entirely unincommoded by my cigar, and when
I, with the practical humour of my nation, sug-
gest that a taste of Cognac will quell all internal
disturbance and restore them to their wonted
health, the gentleman takes such a pull at my
proffered travelling-flask that he is immediately
incapacitated from speech or action, and, com-
mending Madame to my care, retires to the
vessel's side, over which he hangs like Punch