to speak it profanely) upon our efforts in
this cause. I had heard nothing from the bank, and walked straight
there, by some strange impulse, directly after breakfast. I am sure they
may be happy there; for if I were older, and my course of activity were
run, I am sure _I_ could, with God's blessing, for many and many a
year.". . .

"The theatre is open here, and Charles Kean is to-night playing for his
last night. If it had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gone, but I
was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My
quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is _such_ a waiter! Knowles
(not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles of the Cheetham Hill Road[28]) is an
ass to him. This sounds bold, but truth is stranger than fiction.
By-the-by, not the least comical thing that has occurred was the visit
of the upholsterer (with some further calculations) since I began this
letter. I think they took me here at the New London for the Wonderful
Being I am; they were amazingly sedulous; and no doubt they looked for
my being visited by the nobility and gentry of the neighborhood. My
first and only visitor came to-night: a ruddy-faced man in faded black,
with extracts from a feather-bed all over him; an extraordinary and
quite miraculously dirty face; a thick stick; and the personal
appearance altogether of an amiable bailiff in a green old age. I have
not seen the proper waiter since, and more than suspect I shall not
recover this blow. He was announced (by _the_ waiter) as 'a person.' I
expect my bill every minute. . . .

"The waiter is laughing outside the door with another waiter--this is
the latest intelligence of my condition."

FOOTNOTES:

[24] We had at Twickenham a balloon club for the children, of which I
appear to have been elected the president on condition of supplying all
the balloons, a condition which I seem so insufficiently to have
complied with as to bring down upon myself the subjoined resolution. The
Snodgering Blee and Popem Jee were the little brother and sister, for
whom, as for their successors, he was always inventing these surprising
descriptive epithets. "Gammon Lodge, Saturday evening, June 23d, 1838.
Sir, I am requested to inform you that at a numerous meeting of the
Gammon Aeronautical Association for the Encouragement of Science and the
Consumption of Spirits (of Wine)--Thomas Beard Esquire, Mrs. Charles
Dickens, Charles Dickens, Esquire, the Snodgering Blee, Popem Jee, and