I have read complaints in The Times, more than once, I
think, that the Dessein bills are dear. A bottle of soda-water certainly
costs--well, never mind how much. I remember as a boy, at the "Ship" at
Dover (imperante Carolo Decimo), when, my place to London being paid, I
had but 12s. left after a certain little Paris excursion (about which my
benighted parents never knew anything), ordering for dinner a whiting, a
beefsteak, and a glass of negus, and the bill was, dinner 7s., glass of
negus 2s., waiter 6d., and only half a crown left, as I was a sinner,
for the guard and coachman on the way to London! And I WAS a sinner. I
had gone without leave. What a long, dreary, guilty forty hours' journey
it was from Paris to Calais, I remember! How did I come to think of
this escapade, which occurred in the Easter vacation of the year 1830?
I always think of it when I am crossing to Calais. Guilt, sir, guilt
remains stamped on the memory, and I feel easier in my mind now that
it is liberated of this old peccadillo. I met my college tutor only
yesterday. We were travelling, and stopped at the same hotel. He had
the very next room to mine. After he had gone into his apartment, having
shaken me quite kindly by the hand, I felt inclined to knock at his door
and say, "Doctor Bentley, I beg your pardon, but do you remember, when I
was going down at the Easter vacation in 1830, you asked me where I
was going to spend my vacation? And I said, With my friend Slingsby, in
Huntingdonshire.
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