willing by this time to
give for the sight of an honest man! You must almost have forgotten
how _we_ look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites do? are they th**v*ng
all day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such
a depredation! The kangaroos--your Aborigines--do they keep their
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short
fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket!
Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided _a
priori_; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair
a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony.--We
hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that
the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils
their scanning?--It must look very odd; but use reconciles. For their
scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of
them, vile plagiarists.--Is there much difference to see to between
the son of a th**f, and the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do
you bleach in three or in four generations?--I have many questions to
put, but ten Delphic voyages can be made in a shorter time than it
will take to satisfy my scruples.--Do you grow your own hemp?--What is
your staple trade, exclusive of the national profession, I mean? Your
lock-smiths, I take it, are some of your great capitalists.

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when we used
to exchange good-morrows out of our old contiguous windows, in
pump-famed Hare-court in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet
corner?--Why did I?--with its complement of four poor elms, from whose
smoke-dyed barks, the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first
lady-birds! My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in
a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is between us; a
length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English
letters before they can reach you. But while I talk, I think you hear
me,--thoughts dallying with vain surmise--

Aye me! while thee the seas and sounding shores
Hold far away.

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall
hardly know me. Come, before Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you
left children have become sage matrons, while you are tarrying there.
The blooming Miss W----r (you remember Sally W----r) called upon us
ye