e letter I sent you was one directed to the care of E. White, India
House, for Mrs. Hazlitt. _Which_ Mrs. Hazlitt I don't yet know, but A.
has taken it to France on speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There
is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H., and to which of the
three Mrs. Wiggins's it appertains, I don't know. I wanted to open it,
but it's transportation.

I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would strongly recommend
you to take for one story Massinger's "Old Law." It is exquisite. I can
think of no other.

Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands up on his hind
legs. He misses Beckey, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the
other day, and he couldn't eat his victuals after it. Pray God his
intellectuals be not slipping.

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use to ask you to
come and partake of 'em; else there's a steam-vessel.

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it
will be refused, or worse. I never had luck with anything my name was
put to.

Oh, I am so poorly! I _waked_ it at my cousin's the bookbinder's, who is
now with God; or, if he is not, it's no fault of mine.

We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I
like her.

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. They are like little
Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.

Christ, how sick I am!--not of the world, but of the widow's shrub.
She's sworn under L6000, but I think she perjured herself. She howls in
E _la_, and I comfort her in B flat. You understand music?...

"No shrimps!" (That's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles
are to be done.)

I am uncertain where this _wandering_ letter may reach you. What you
mean by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage?
So I do to Dover.

We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons. She was
howling--part howling and part giving directions to the proctor--when
crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks
grin, and I grinned, and the widow tittered--_and then I knew that she
was not inconsolable_. Mary was more frightened than hurt.

She'd make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean the widow).

"If he bring but a _relict_ away,
He is happy, nor heard to complain."

SHENSTONE.

Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his
wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it