Persia has just sent me word that he has presented me with two
thousand pearl-of-Oman necklaces, and I don't know how to get them
over, the duties are so heavy.' 'Nothing easier,' replied I; 'I'll
bring them in my boots.' 'Nonsense!' said the Emperor of the
Crimea. 'Nonsense! yourself,' replied I, sportively: for the Emperor
of the Crimea always gives me my joke; and so after dinner I went over
to Persia. The thing was easily enough done. I ordered a hundred
thousand pairs of boots or so, filled them with the pearls; said at
the Custom-house that they were part of my private wardrobe, and I had
left the blocks in to keep them stretched, for I was particular about
my bunions. The officers bowed, and said that their own feet were
tender,--upon which I jokingly remarked that I wished their
consciences were, and so in the pleasantest manner possible the
pearl-of-Oman necklaces were bowed out of Persia, and the Emperor of
the Crimea gave me three thousand of them as my share. It was no
trouble. It was only ordering the boots, and whistling to the infernal
rascals of Persian shoe-makers to hang for their pay."

I could reply nothing to my new acquaintance, but I treasured his
stories to tell to Prue, and at length summoned courage to ask him why
he had taken passage.

"Pure fun," answered he, "nothing else under the sun. You see, it
happened in this way:--I was sitting quietly and swinging in a cedar
of Lebanon, on the very summit of that mountain, when suddenly,
feeling a little warm, I took a brisk dive into the Mediterranean. Now
I was careless, and got going obliquely, and with the force of such a
dive I could not come up near Sicily, as I had intended, but I went
clean under Africa, and came out at the Cape of Grood Hope, and as
Fortune would have it, just as this good ship was passing. So I