changes. "Well,
Watson," says one, "I must be off, I have several calls to make."
"Bless me," says another, taking out his watch, "it's getting on to
half-past five (the clock has just struck three) and it's my week
to read in Chapel." Helter-skelter away they go, like Leonora
pursued by the ghosts.

Der Mond scheint hell,
Hurrah! die Todten reiten schnell.

Well, Bessie, you have called up old times. Merry days they were,
and have left no sting. I sometimes see Mary. I go occasionally to
Didcot, where there are nice children; but Milton Hill is just a
mile and a half too far off. I can't walk as I could in those days
when we used to saunter through the scented glades of the happy
valley, or penetrate the mysterious horrors of Bagley. The last
fragment of those excursions was with Fanny and Henrietta to
Headington and round by Marston (as intended), but time was getting
on, and your good uncle would be waiting for his dinner. So in an
evil hour we made a short cut across the fields and verified the
proverb,--Hedges without a gap; ditches without a plank; gates
guarded with _chevaux de frise_ of prickly thorns. It was then that
Henrietta, madly pushing at an impracticable passage, uttered that
famous parody:

I'll brave the scratching of the thorn,
But not a hungry uncle.

But I am spinning out a double-thrummed homily, and you have better
things to attend to. My love to you all. Believe me, my dear
Bessie, _vuestros hasta la muerte_,
J. WATSON.

Bessie had sent as a Christmas present to Dr. Kynaston a silk
watch-chain of her own make, a favourite gift of hers to dear friends.
In his reply the doctor proposes to make an appeal to the public on
behalf of the blind. He writes:

ST. PAUL'S, _26th December 1856_.

MY DEAR BESSIE--Your pleasing remembrance both of me and of old
times was a happy and early beginning to me of yesterday's holy
celebrations. I think you over-rate my love of flowers. Till we
used to pick them together, I fear I was but a Peter Bellish sort
of being, of whom it is said that

A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.

I seldom look at