Mr. Wilkie Collins, and other contributors
to "Household Words."

[Sidenote: Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, Jan. 17th, 1858._

MY DEAR WILKIE,

I am very sorry to receive so bad an account of the foot. But I hope it
is all in the past tense now.

I met with an incident the other day, which I think is a good deal in
your way, for introduction either into a long or short story. Dr.
Sutherland and Dr. Monro went over St. Luke's with me (only last
Friday), to show me some distinctly and remarkably developed types of
insanity. Among other patients, we passed a deaf and dumb man, now
afflicted with incurable madness too, of whom they said that it was only
when his madness began to develop itself in strongly-marked mad actions,
that it began to be suspected. "Though it had been there, no doubt, some
time." This led me to consider, suspiciously, what employment he had
been in, and so to ask the question. "Aye," says Dr. Sutherland, "that
is the most remarkable thing of all, Mr. Dickens. He was employed in the
transmission of electric-telegraph messages; and it is impossible to
conceive what delirious despatches that man may have been sending about
all over the world!"

Rejoiced to hear such good report of the play.

Ever faithfully.

[Sidenote: Mr. Edmund Yates.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Tuesday, Feb. 2nd, 1858._

MY DEAR YATES,

Your quotation is, as I supposed, all wrong. The text is _not_ "which
his 'owls was organs." When Mr. Harris went into an empty dog-kennel, to
spare his sensitive nature the anguish of overhearing Mrs. Harris's
exclamations on the occasion of the birth of her first child (the
Princess Royal of the Harris family), "he never took his hands away from
his ears, or came out once, till he was showed the baby." On
encountering that spectacle, he was (being of a weakly constitution)
"took with fits." For this distressing complaint he was medically
treated; the doctor "collared him, and laid him on his back upon the
airy stones"--please to observe what follows--"and she was told, to ease
her mind, his 'owls was organs."

That is to say, Mrs. Harris, lying exhausted on her bed, in the first
sweet relief of freedom from pain, merely covered with the counterpane,
and not yet "put comfortable," hears a noise apparently proceeding from
the back-yard, and says, in a flushed and