sent you "_Mr. Punch looking at the Midnight Sun_." pretty humorous I
think ("more pretty than humorous," you cabled to me at Bergen), and
since that I have sent you several beautiful works of Art, in return
for which I received another telegram from you saying, "No 'go.' Send
something funny." The last I sent ("_The Church-going Bell_," a
pretty peasant woman in a boat--"_belle_," you see) struck me as very
humorous. The idea of people going to Church in a boat!

What was I to do? Well--here at last I send you something which _must_
be humorous. It looks like it. _Mr. Punch_ driving in Norway, in a
_cariole. Mr. Punch_ anywhere is humorous; and with TOBY too; though I
am perfectly aware that TOBY, M.P., is in his place in the House;
but then TOBY is ubarquitous. That's funny, isn't it?--see "bark"
substituted for "biq," the original word being "ubiquitous." This is
the sort of "_vürdtwistren_" at which they roar in Sweden.

It's all _très bien_ (very well) but how the deuce can you be funny in
the Baltic? Why call it Baltic? For days and nights at sea, sometimes
up, more often down, and a sense of inability coming over me in the
middle of the boundless deep. Alas, poor YORICK!

Then breakfast. Then lunch. Then dinner. No drinking permitted between
meals: to which regulation. _I am gradually becoming habituated._ It
is difficult to acquire new habits. Precious difficult in mid-ocean,
where there isn't a tailor. [Humorous again, eh?] I now understand
what is the meaning of "a Depression is crossing the Atlantic."
There's an awful Depression hanging about the Baltic.

[Illustration]