Attraction of Paris--Cinderella's glass slipper--A glimpse of
Napoleon III.--The Rue de Rivoli The Riviera in 1865--A novel
Tricolor flag--Jenny Lind--The championship of the Mediterranean--
My father's boat and crew--The race--The Abercorn wins the
championship.

Every one familiar with John Leech's Pictures from Punch must
have an excellent idea of the outward appearance of "swells" of
the "sixties."

As a child I had an immense admiration for these gorgeous beings,
though, between ourselves, they must have been abominably loud
dressers. They affected rather vulgar sealskin waistcoats, with
the festoons of a long watch-chain meandering over them, above
which they exhibited a huge expanse of black or blue satin,
secured by two scarf-pins of the same design, linked together,
like Siamese twins, by a little chain.

A reference to Leech's drawings will show the flamboyant checked
"pegtop" trousers in which they delighted. Their principal
adornment lay in their immense "Dundreary" whiskers, usually at
least eight inches long. In a high wind these immensely long
whiskers blew back over their owners' shoulders in the most
comical fashion, and they must have been horribly inconvenient. I
determined early in life to affect, when grown-up, longer whiskers
than any one else--if possible down to my waist; but alas for
human aspirations! By the time that I had emerged from my
chrysalis stage, Dundreary whiskers had ceased to be the fashion;
added to which unkind Nature had given me a hairless face.