all night."
He closed his letter hopefully, but next day (24th September) I had less
favourable report. "Leech has been very ill with congestion of the brain
ever since I wrote, and being still in excessive pain has had ice to his
head continuously, and been bled in the arm besides. Beard and I sat up
there, all night." On the 26th he wrote, "My plans are all unsettled by
Leech's illness; as of course I do not like to leave this place while I
can be of any service to him and his good little wife. But all visitors
are gone to-day, and Winterbourne once more left to the engaging family
of the inimitable B. Ever since I wrote to you Leech has been seriously
worse, and again very heavily bled. The night before last he was in such
an alarming state of restlessness, which nothing could relieve, that I
proposed to Mrs. Leech to try magnetism. Accordingly, in the middle of
the night I fell to; and after a very fatiguing bout of it, put him to
sleep for an hour and thirty-five minutes. A change came on in the
sleep, and he is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded little Mrs.
Leech across him, when he was asleep, as if he had been a truss of
hay. . . . What do you think of my setting up in the magnetic line with a
large brass plate? 'Terms, twenty-five guineas per nap.'" When he wrote
again on the 30th, he had completed his sixth number; and his friend was
so clearly on the way to recovery that he was next day to leave for
Broadstairs with his wife, her sister, and the two little girls. "I will
merely add that I entreat to be kindly remembered to Thackeray" (who had
a dangerous illness at this time); "that I think I have, without a
doubt, _got_ the Periodical notion; and that I am writing under the
depressing and discomforting influence of paying off the tribe of bills
that pour in upon an unfortunate family-young-man on the eve of a
residence like this. So no more at present from the disgusted, though
still inimitable, and always affectionate B."

He stayed at Broadstairs till he had finished his number seven, and what
else chiefly occupied him were thoughts about the Periodical of which
account will presently be given. "Such a night and day of rain," ran his
first letter, "I should think the oldest inhabitant never saw! and yet,
in the ould formiliar Broadstairs, I somehow or other don't mind it
much. The change has done Mamey a world of good, and I have begun to
sleep again. As for news, you might as well ask me for dolph