poste restante_)--if she is well
and happy, put a mark thus +; if--

Remember me to all. I will endeavour to bear my miseries patiently.
A person in my state of health should not have such miseries to bear.
Write a short note to my sister, saying you have heard from me. Severn
is very well. If I were in better health I would urge your coming to
Rome. I fear there is no one can give me any comfort. Is there any
news of George? O that something fortunate had ever happened to me or
my brothers!--then I might hope,--but despair is forced upon me as a
habit. My dear Brown, for my sake, be her advocate for ever. I
cannot say a word about Naples; I do not feel at all concerned in the
thousand novelties around me. I am afraid to write to her. I should
like her to know that I do not forget her. Oh, Brown, I have coals of
fire in my breast. It surprises me that the human heart is capable of
containing and bearing so much misery. Was I born for this end? God
bless her, and her mother, and my sister, and George, and his wife,
and you, and all!...

THOMAS HOOD

1799-1845

To CHARLES DICKENS

_American Notes_

17 Elm Tree Road, 12 _Oct_. 1842.

DEAR DICKENS,

Can you let me have an early copy of the _American Notes_ so that I
may review it in the _New Monthly_? Is it really likely to be ready
as advertised? I aim this at Devonshire Place, supposing you to be
returned, for with these winds 'tis no fit time for the coast. But
your bones are not so weather unwise (for ignorance _is_ bliss) as
mine. I should have asked this by word of mouth in Devonshire Place,
but the weather has kept me indoors. It is no fiction that the
complaint, derived from Dutch malaria seven years ago, is revived by
Easterly winds. Otherwise I have been better than usual, and 'never
say die'. Don't forget about the Yankee Notes. I never had but one
American friend, and lost him through _a good crop of pears_. He paid
us a visit in England; whereupon in honour of him, a pear tree, which
had never borne fruit to speak of within memory of man, was loaded
with ninety dozen of brown somethings. Our gardener said they were
a _keeping_ sort, and would be good at Christmas; whereupon, as our
Jonathan was on the eve of sailing for the States, we sent him a few
dozens to dessert him on the voyage. Some he put at the bottom of a
trunk (he wrote to us) to take to America; but he could not have been
gone above a day or two, when all _our_ pears began t