[Illustration: OUR YOTTING YORICK.

YOTTING JOTTINGS.]

Oh dear! oh dear! What perils I have been through! You'll see me again
shortly; but there have been _momentums_ in my career when I said
to myself, "Shall I ever _aller_ out of this alive!" I escaped the
Petersburg police; they punched out your Cartoon, and all the lines
about the Czar and the Jews; that's why I was so persecuted, and why
I was watched. I wish to Heaven you wouldn't have Cartoons about Czars
and Jews just when I'm at Peterborough, I mean Petersburg; same name,
different place. But there, that's all over now, and _jamais_ will I
go and put myself within the clutches of the Russian Bear again. The
midnight sun must do without _me_ in future. I send you a sketch
I made of a gargle--I think that's the name--on a church-door in
Lapland. Isn't it really droll? You're always bothering me for
something droll, and _now you've got it_. Then, _Mr. Punch_, riding
a reindeer at half-a-crown an hour. Then here are the little Lapps
offering our sailors a lap of liquor; and I said to myself, "One touch
of Nature," which struck me as just the very motto for the picture. I
roared with laughter at it. "This'll do for 'em at home," I said, and
so here it is. And look at the "Lapps of Luxury"! You know that "Lap
of Luxury" is a proverbial phrase; and, as you told me to make some
comic sketches of the manners and customs of the country, why, I've
done so; and, if they ain't funny, I don't know what humour is.
_Voilà!_

But you really must not expect me to grimace and buffoon. You must
take me _seriatim_ or not at all. I can't stand on my head to sketch.