a Magdalene, and
talked like a magpie, I felt as if I was running my head against a stone
wall all the time I appealed to the authorities to save her from utter
ruin. The only impression I seemed to make upon them was that of
surprise that any one should take to heart in such wise the case of some
one not belonging to them. Perhaps the worthy overseer thought me her
sister in another sense from that in which I am so, from the vehemence
with which I urged upon him the imperative duty of snatching so young a
creature from the doom to which she seemed inevitably delivered over.
All their answers reminded me of Mephistopheles' reply to Faust's
frantic pity for Gretchen, "She is not the first."

Now to answer your last question. I do not intend to cut the manager of
the Princess's Theatre; but I do not intend either to make any
application to him. If he offers me a reasonable weekly engagement, I
will take it, and make him a curtsey; if he does not, I will do without
it, and live as I best may on what I have already earned, and what I
can earn in the provinces, till the spring....

C---- came up from Bath to London with me, and after talking politics,
art, and literature, began upon religion, which, not being
controversially disposed, I declined, commending him to the study of the
newspaper, and, curling myself up in one of those charming long seats of
the Great Western railroad coaches, went to sleep, and so accomplished
the latter part of my journey, in spite of that dangerous proximity, an
unconverted heterodox Protestant. Farewell, my dearest Hal.

I am ever as ever yours,
FANNY.

18, ORCHARD STREET, December 10th.
DEAREST HAL,

... I had a horrible day yesterday, from which I am not yet recovered
this morning. It wound up by the shock of hearing of Liston's death.
There was something in my last intercourse with him that made this
unexpected intelligence very painful; and then his wonderful strength,
his great, noble frame, that seemed to promise so long and vigorous a
hold on life, made his sudden death very shocking. When I met him last
in the park, he told me he was very ill, and had been spitting up a
quart of blood after walking twenty-five miles, and that there was
something all wrong with his throat; in spite of which, I was greatly
shaken by the news of his death, which was