yours, and wholly unaccountable departure from your usual
accuracy in all things, your satisfaction with the portrait is a great
pleasure to me. It has received every conceivable pains at Frith's
hands, and ought on his account to be good. It is a little too much (to
my thinking) as if my next-door neighbour were my deadly foe, uninsured,
and I had just received tidings of his house being afire; otherwise very
good.

I cannot tell you how delighted we shall be if you would come to Gad's
Hill. You should see some charming woods and a rare old castle, and you
should have such a snug room looking over a Kentish prospect, with every
facility in it for pondering on the beauties of its master's beard! _Do_
come, but you positively _must not_ come and go on the same day.

We retreat there on Monday, and shall be there all the summer.

My small boy is perfectly happy at Southsea, and likes the school very
much. I had the finest letter two or three days ago, from another of my
boys--Frank Jeffrey--at Hamburg. In this wonderful epistle he says:
"Dear papa, I write to tell you that I have given up all thoughts of
being a doctor. My conviction that I shall never get over my stammering
is the cause; all professions are barred against me. The only thing I
should like to be is a gentleman farmer, either at the Cape, in Canada,
or Australia. With my passage paid, fifteen pounds, a horse, and a
rifle, I could go two or three hundred miles up country, sow grain, buy
cattle, and in time be very comfortable."

Considering the consequences of executing the little commission by the
next steamer, I perceived that the first consequence of the fifteen
pounds would be that he would be robbed of it--of the horse, that it
would throw him--and of the rifle, that it would blow his head off;
which probabilities I took the liberty of mentioning, as being against
the scheme. With best love from all,

Ever believe me, my dear Mrs. Watson,
Your faithful and affectionate.

[Sidenote: Mrs. White.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, June 5th, 1859._

MY DEAR MRS. WHITE,

I do not write to you this morning because I have anything to say--I
well know where your consolation is set, and to what beneficent figure
your thoughts are raised--but simply because you are so much in my mind
that it is a relief to send you and dear White my love. You are always
in our hearts and on