The Sun. — 1862-04-15 (London, England)

TEE MOSQUITOES OF MARSEILLES.  _ As you are dropping off to sleep, there comes at you from the outer darkness a blast of a fiercely blown little trumpet, which vibrates in your ears like the note of a very shrill musical glass ; and, if you are at all familiar with the sound, drives sleep away at once. The first thing to be done is to shut the window, and in the course of this operation you damage your fingers with that combination of crank and lever employed to fasten windows in France. Your temper is thus dangerously roused, and with towel and lighted taper you go forth to battle determined to spare neither age nor sex. In the blindness of your wrath you murder a couple of innocent sleeping flies, and smash a late spider who is hurrying home to bed up the wall ; but of the enemy you can see nothing. He is in ambush, however, watching you, for no sooner are you in bed and the candle out than he returns to the charge. Then you think of trying a stratagem, and letting him settle before you attack him. After a prolonged fantasia in something unusually sharp, the music comes to a sudden stop, and you prepare to steel out your hand for a match, when sting! goes his stiletto into the corner of your left eyelid, and instinctively you deal yourself a thwack on the adjacent organ that for the moment produces the effect of a final burst of fireworks at Cremorne. Surely you hit him that time you think ; but you didn't, and he comes down upon you again as soon as you are quiet ; and so with sorties and retreats and severe punishment about the face—and perhaps, if have mosquito curtains, a diversion created by setting fire to the house—the night drags on until at last, wearied out and fairly beaten off, you bid him bite his best, and fall into a dogged doze and dream that you are being pursued down very deep steps on account of the informality in your passport, by the whole French army, whimh somehow changes into a cloud of mosquitoes just as you are getting away. But the sorest trial comes with the morning light. The field of Waterloo on the morning of the 19th was not a more touching spectacle than that which yoeuyrel • glass presents ltstoooyhnglike a little sackou. Left eye nearly closed of currant a winkjelly,urrantx aed and rueful ; and forcing you foreheadtoreg allardn ature with over bumps like the crust of a pigeon-pie or the surface of a common where the moles have been burrowing. Ndy, more than this. There are yet other woes in store for you ; for is there not an unusual feeling about the tip ofyour nose? Surely the accursed insect cannot have violated the sanctity of that sacred feature ? And yet, now that you COlll6 to look at it, there does seem to be something wrong; it is far redder than it has any right to be in a person of your strictly temperate habits, and viewed sideway-, there is a decided bump on the end of it. This is the cruellest blow of all. Now, you think you could have been happy with a closed eye and a knobby forehead. What is even a black eye to a nose that is gradually assuming—for you do feel it swelling—the dimensions and colour of a tomato ? There is something rudely heroic about a black eye; it may have been received in the defence of beauty and virtue, but the expression of your unfortunate countenance is simply comical, and here you are condemned to go about for at least eight-and-forty hours (supposing you don't get bitten again) with bitterness in your heart, irritation in your skin, and a physiognomy as grotesque as a pantomime mask.—Frassr's.magazine for April.