blank at top of my letter, not being determined _which_ to
address it to, so Farmer and Farmer's wife will please to divide our
thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your
chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your labourers
busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is long!

VIVE L'AGRICULTURE!

Frank Field's marriage of course you have seen in the papers, and that
his brother Barron is expected home.

How do you make your pigs so little?
They are vastly engaging at that age.
I was so myself.
Now I am a disagreeable old hog--
A middle-aged-gentleman-and-a-half.

My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired. I have my sight,
hearing, taste, pretty perfect; and can read the Lord's Prayer in the
common type, by the help of a candle, without making many mistakes.

Believe me, while my faculties last, a proper appreciator of your many
kindnesses in this way; and that the last lingering relish of past
flavors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that little Ear. It
was the left ear, which is lucky. Many happy returns (not of the Pig)
but of the New Year to both.--

Mary for her share of the Pig and the memoirs desires to send the same--

D'r. M'r. C. and M'rs. C.--

Yours truly

C. LAMB.

[This letter is usually supposed to have been addressed by Lamb to Mr.
and Mrs. Bruton of Mackery End. The address is, however, Mrs. Collier,
Smallfield Place, East Grinstead, Sussex.

"If Evelyn could have seen him." John Evelyn's _Diary_ had recently been
published, in 1818 and 1819, in two large quarto volumes.]

LETTER 307

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES ADERS

[Jan. 8, 1823.]

Dear Sir--We shall have great pleasure in surprising Mrs. Aders on her
Birthday--You will perceive how cunningly I have contrived the direction
of this note, _to evade postage_.

Yours truly

C. LAMB.

8 Jan. '23.

[This note is sent to me by Mr. G. Dunlop of Kilmarnock. It is the only
note to Aders, a friend of Crabb Robinson, to whose house Lamb often
went for talk and whist. Aders had a fine collection of German pictures.
See the verses to him in Vol. IV. The cunning in the address consisted
apparently in obtaining the signature of an India House colleague to
certify that it was "official."]

LETTER 308

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

9 Jan., 1823.

"Throw yourself on the world without any rational