used nor well occupied, nor
well anything else. For if "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,"
what does the reverse do for him? This passion for cakes and sugar-candy
in adult, not to say advanced, life is rather lugubrious; and of course
it strikes me forcibly on my return from America, where the absence of a
wholesome spirit of recreation is one of the dreariest features of the
national existence....

Here the absolute necessity for mere amusement strikes me as a sort of
dry-rot in certain portions of the fabric of civilized society, and
tends to make it a sapless crumbling mass of appearances--the most
ostentatious appearance of all, that of pleasure, being perhaps the
hollowest and most unreal.

It takes, I believe, no meaner qualities than intelligence and goodness
to enable a person to be thoroughly, heartily, and satisfactorily
amused.

Unless you, my dear friend, deprecate our meeting to part again, I have
no intention whatever of leaving England without seeing you once more. I
cannot imagine doing such a thing, unless in compliance with your wish,
or submission to inevitable necessity. I hope to come down to Torquay,
to you and Dorothy, for a few days in the winter.

I am amused at your saying that you don't think any one would feel very
comfortable living with me, who had not a great love of truth. Catherine
Sedgwick once said it was impossible to tell a lie before me _with any
comfort_; and yet I have told my own lies, and certainly sinned, as did
not the worthy lady who, being charged with a falsehood, replied
unhesitatingly, "Of course, I know it was a lie; _I made it!_ I thought
it would do good." Another lady of my acquaintance, speaking of a person
we both knew, who was indifferent, to say the least of it, upon the
question of veracity, exclaimed, "Oh, but Mrs. C---- is really too bad,
for she will tell stories _when there isn't the least necessity for
it_."

A---- was a curious instance of the distortion of a very upright nature;
for she is undoubtedly a person of great natural truth and integrity,
and yet, under the influence of an unfortunate passion, her pre-eminent
virtue suffered total eclipse; and she must have condescended, proud and
sincere as she was, to much duplicity and much absolute falsehood. Poor
girl!

I think one great argument against wrong-doing of every sort is that it
almost invariably, sooner or later, leads to a sacrifice of truth in
some way or other; and for that