The Argosy — page 74: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

64 eo THIS YEAR AT DIEPPE. E arrived in a diligence, and a cloud of dust. Declining the ordinary route, zd Newhaven, for that of Folke- stone, we left the crossing from thence an open question, until the state of the sea should be ascertained. It proved to be clear, blue, very calm, and we soon touched the shores of Boulogne, intending to proceed, as we had once done before, by train to St. Valery-sur-Somme, and thence on to Dieppe by diligence. “You can’t do it,” said the commissionaire, who was taking an inter- est in the boxes. Shock the first. “ Not doit?” “No. You must go on to Abbeville, and take the diligence from thence ; there’s no longer & proper correspondence between Dieppe and St. Valery.” Up to Abbeville we went by first train, and descended at the Hotel de France, whence the diligence would start in the morning. It proved to be an omnibus with two horses, instead of a diligence with four; and it charged itself with the mail-bags to be delivered at the stations en route. We started after breakfast. C preferred a perch aloft with the driver, and I had the inside to myself. Some of the windows would not open, and some would not shut; the August sun was in- tensely hot ; the white dust blewin, in clouds. What an object I should be at the mid-day halting-place ! At first the stoppages seemed incessant, what with the different com- missions the driver had to execute, and which appeared to consist _ chiefly of talking, and the number of houses he chose to say ‘“‘Bon jour ” to on his own score, getting downto do it. During one of these interludes, C came round. ‘‘ What do you think? Our names were sent up from Eu last night to the landlord of the Hotel de France, telling him to keep two places for us in the diligence!” I thought the words were a joke, but he insisted. This driver—the present man now chattering close by at the open house-door, one leg inside, one out, one eye on his friends, the other on his poor, patient horses, lashing their tails in impotent warfare with the flies—had brought the paper himself from Eu. But the thing seemed an impossibility; no living being who knew us was aware we had even crossed the Channel. ‘“ You must have misunderstood what the man said; you are forgetting your French :” and he hurried back to his place, ma fit of laughter, at the words. Not understand the man !—he, born and bred in France! On we went gaily ; the sun hotter, the dust greater. ECOMiIcoOolxs.cO©