Not that it's such a b-bad place after all,--I d-dare say if I hadn't _had_ to go I should have gone all the same, for what is a f-fellah to do who ith n't much of a sportsman just about this time? There 'th n-nothing particular going on in London. Evewything is b-beathly dull; so I thought I would just run down on the Southeastern Wailway to be--ha, ha!--Bwightoned up a bit. (Come, th-that's not bad for an impromptu!)
B-Bwighton was invented in the year 1784, by his Woyal Highness George P-Pwince of Wales,--the author of the shoebuckle, the stand-up collar (a b-beathly inconvenient and cut-throat thort of a machine), and a lot of other exthploded things. He built the Pavilion down there, which looks like a lot of petrified onions from Bwobdinag clapped down upon a guard-house. There'th a jolly sort of garden attached to the building, in which the b-band plays twice a week, and evewy one turns in there about four o'clock, so I went too (n-not _too_ o'clock, you know, but f-four o'clock). I--I'm vewy fond of m-martial music, mythelf. I like the dwums and the t-twombones, and the ophicleides, and all those sort of inshtwuments,--yeth, ethpethelly the bwass ones,--they're so vewy exthpiring, they are. Thtop though, ith it expiring or _p-per_thpiring?--n-neither of 'em sound quite right. Oh! I have it now, it--it's _in_thspiring,--that'th what it is, because the f-fellahs _bweathe into them_!
That weminds me of a widdle I made down there (I--I've taken to widdles lately, and weally it'th a vewy harmleth thort of a way of getting thwough the morning, and it amuthes two f-fellahs at onth, because if--if you athk a fellah a widdle, and he can't guess it, you can have a jolly good laugh at _him_, and--if he--if he _doth_ guess it, he--I mean you--no--that is the widdle--stop, I--I'm getting confuthed,--where wath I? Oh! I know. If--if he _doth_ guess it.... however it ithn't vewy likely he would--so what's the good of thupposing impwobabilities?) Well, thith was the widdle I made,--I thed to Sloper (Sloper's a fwiend of mine,--a vewy gook thort of fellah Sloper is,--I d-don't know exactly what his pwofession would be called, but hith uncle got him into a b-berth where he gets f-five hundred a year,--f-for doing nothing--s-somewhere--I forget where--but I--I know he does it),--I said to Sloper, "Why is that f-fellah with the b-bassooon l-like his own instrument?" and Sloper said, "How--how the dooth should I know?" (Ha, ha!--I thought he'd give it up!) So I said to Sloper, "Why, b-because they both get _blown_--in _time_!" _You_ thee the joke, of course, but I don't think Sloper did, thomhow; all he thed was, "V-vewy mild, Dundreary,"--and t-tho--it was mild--thertainly, _f-for October_, but I d-don't thee why a f-fellah should go making wemarks about the weather instead of laughing at m-my widdle.