y dear Hal, what you say about laughing _with_ people, as an _instead_
for laughing _at_ them, is, like most things you say, frightful
nonsense. And what sort of a laugh, moreover, is it that you offer that
unfortunate Dorothy for her feeble participation? Nothing of a healthy,
wholesome, vigorous, vital, individual, personal kind; but some pitiful
pretence of wit or humor, having for its vague or indefinite object
ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible
intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that
belongs to real individual absurdity, and the direct ridicule of it,
judiciously and dexterously applied; the only efficient--I had almost
said legitimate--object of a rational creature's amusement. If Dorothy
depends upon you for her entertainment (otherwise than as you
involuntarily, unconsciously, naturally, and simply furnish it to me), I
pity her; and if you depend upon her for yours, I pity you still
more--for I doubt if even I, according to my own system, could extract
any from her, she is so _painfully_ _un_ridiculous. You must be
deplorably dull together, I am--certain, I was going to say--satisfied;
but that's neither kind nor civil, and I heartily wish for both _your_
sakes that I was with you.

I am not sure that that visit may not be accomplished yet; for my
reappearance on the stage does not seem likely to take place so very
immediately but that I might perhaps contrive to run down to you for a
short time. But, indeed, all my concerns are like so many pennies tossed
up in the air for "heads or tails," and I cannot tell how they will
fall, or what results I may arrive at.

I have been asked to go down to Manchester, to act, and if I have any
great difficulty or delay to encounter in finding an engagement in
London, I shall probably do so.... The step I am about to take is so
painful to me that all petty annoyances and minor vexations lose their
poignancy in the contemplation of it (_a quelque chose--a bien des
choses malheur est bon_), and having at length made up my mind to it,
smaller _repugnancies_ connected with it have ceased to affect me with
any acuteness....

Moxon cannot publish my Italian journal immediately, because the whole
of the American edition must be ready to go to press before he brings it
out here. I suppose it will come out some time after Easter. Emily told
you of his first offer for it, and of his gallant mode of making it. He
is surely