hat do you say to my _acting_ at the Montreal Theatre? I am an old
hand at such matters, and am going to join the officers of the
garrison in a public representation for the benefit of a local
charity. We shall have a good house, they say. I am going to enact
one Mr. Snobbington in a funny farce called A Good Night's Rest. I
shall want a flaxen wig and eyebrows; and my nightly rest is broken
by visions of there being no such commodities in Canada. I wake in
the dead of night in a cold perspiration, surrounded by imaginary
barbers, all denying the existence or possibility of obtaining such
articles. If ---- had a flaxen head, I would certainly have it
shaved and get a wig and eyebrows out of him, for a small pecuniary
compensation.

By the by, if you could only have seen the man at Harrisburg,
crushing a friendly Quaker in the parlor door! It was the greatest
sight I ever saw. I had told him not to admit anybody whatever,
forgetting that I had previously given this honest Quaker a special
invitation to come. The Quaker would not be denied, and H. was
stanch. When I came upon them, the Quaker was black in the face, and
H. was administering the final squeeze. The Quaker was still rubbing
his waistcoat with an expression of acute inward suffering, when I
left the town. I have been looking for his death in the newspapers
almost daily.

Do you know one General G.? He is a weazen-faced warrior, and in his
dotage. I had him for a fellow-passenger on board a steamboat. I had
also a statistical colonel with me, outside the coach from
Cincinnati to Columbus. A New England poet buzzed about me on the
Ohio, like a gigantic bee. A mesmeric doctor, of an impossibly great
age, gave me pamphlets at Louisville. I have suffered much, very
much.

If I could get beyond New York to see anybody, it would be (as you
know) to see _you_. But I do not expect to reach the "Carlton" until
the last day of May, and then we are going with the Coldens
somewhere on the banks of the North River for a couple of days. So
you see we shall not have much leisure for our voyaging
preparations.

You and Dr. Howe (to whom my love) MUST come to New York. On the 6th
of June, you must engage yourselves to dine with us at the
"Carlton"; and if we don't make a merry evening of it, the fault
shall not be in us.