"RE

"And really, FATHER NILE," said MR. PUNCH, "and now what's the matter with you, you old Myth and Mystery. Light another pipe, and be sociable. Are you smoking tomboc? If so, give it an extra wash and squeeze in your own river; for it 's strong, and makes you surly, and we won't have Surley Hall on the Nile." "You make me laugh," said FATHER NILE, "but you are uncommonly familiar."

"Nobody

And so we

። Familiar, but by no means vulgar," returned MR. PUNCH, lighting his cigar with a dry reed. can say I'm vulgar. I have all the exquisite ease of society that is too high to care what anybody thinks. know all about you at last. Do you know that you remind me of a sensation novel; when the secret's out there's nothing in it?"

'Come, I won't be talked to like that," said the Nile. "I am a most respectable old river, and if I am not what I was, that is not my fault. Six hundred and thirty years before your era, there was a Milesian factory upon my Bolbitic branch."

"Bother your Bolbitic branch," said MR. PUNCH. "Do you consider it a credit to have been patronised by the Irish of the Future ?"

"I drowned CLEOPATRA's first husband in Forty-Seven."

"If

you

had submerged the entire ménage, the world would have lost a bad woman and a good play." "Then PROBUS, who conquered FLORIAN-"

"I never could do that, but then I hate all French books, except RABELAIS."

"He improved my navigation-"

"In otio et negotio Probus, just like me," said MR. PUNCH.

"Didn't I defeat the Fifth Crusade, by an overwhelming majority?" said FATHER NILE, indignantly. "Who's a denying on it?" responded MR. PUNCH. "What an edgey old man you are there's no talking to you. Don't I hold you in all reverence? Honor est a Nilo-do you remember that, your honour?"

The placable old creature recovered his equanimity, and said, smiling, "At my time of life we are, perhaps, too apt to believe that we are not treated with due respect."

"Certainly, there's no fool like an old fool," answered the incorrigible MR. PUNCH. "But I tell you I have the utmost veneration for you. Don't I remember what JUVENAL, whom I strongly resemble in all his few good qualities, said about your mouths-rari quippe boni-and the gates of Thebes?"

"He didn't mean my Thebes, MR. PUNCH."

"I know that, you quarrelsome old watering-pot. He meant Thebes in Boeotia, where a good many of my literary friends come from. Well, are you not much obliged to my Anglo-Indian friends, CAPTAIN SPEKE and CAPTAIN GRANT, for inventing you, and bringing you up into fashion again, and getting you talked about by SIR RODERICK MURCHISON, in the presence of the most distinguished and intellectual Swells of the Metropolis of the World?" "Do you mean Alexandria ?" said FATHER NILE, languidly.

"Alexandria be-obliterated! No, I won't say that, because it gave my friend CHARLES KINGSLEY the scene for Hypatia. Alexandria, indeed! Why, one of your own hippopotamusses could tell you better, if it corresponds with its cousins in the Regent's Park. I mean London, MR. NILUS, the Capital of the Universe."

"Never heard of it, and please don't scold me," said FATHER NILE, pretending to be affected.

Come, come," said MR. PUNCH, "that won't do with me. Is that a crocodile I see before me? TOBY, look

out, or that animal 'll be a-biting on you."

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared FATHER NILE (giving his urn such an extra shake that the man at the Nilometer at Cairo ran out bellowing that the inundation had come without notice, for which indiscretion he was, we are happy to say, well bastinadoed), "there's no selling you, MR. PUNCH."

"My publishers could tell you another story," said MR. PUNCH, modestly, "and could inform you that I am sold wherever the English language, or even what, in America and Belgravia, is supposed to be the English language, is spoken."

"Done this time, however," said FATHER NILE, radiantly. "I know all about you, and how the nation worship you, and your dog ToBY, who reminds me of Anubis-latrator Anubis, as ÖVID says.

"The Dog of the Nile. H'm," said MR. PUNCH. "Don't growl, TOBY, Sir, the elderly gentleman means to be complimentary, and doesn't know that you have the entrée of the British Museum, and have seen Anubis." "I heard," said FATHER NILE, "that the very first sight which the Prince of your country showed to his beautiful bride, on the day of her arrival, was Yourself, crowned, like a priest, with flowers."

"We don't crown our priests, except sometimes with powdered wigs," said MR. PUNCH, "but on other points you are accurately informed; and though I don't care a piastre for Alexandria, I value the smile I received on that day from ALEXANDRA at the price of the Pyramids."

"You deserved it," said the Aged River.

"Without self-conceit, I believe that I did," said MR. PUNCH.

"You resemble Me," said the Nile. "Year after year I send forth, for joy, and for comfort, and for fertilising, my magnificent Volume"

"So do I," said MR. PUNCH, "and here is my

Forty-Fourth Volume."