ck passage over to
Dublin to-morrow night.

Tell Mamie (with my dear love to her and Katie) that I will write to her
from Dublin--probably on Sunday. Tell her too that the stories she told
me in her letter were not only capital stories in themselves, but
_excellently told_ too.

What Arthur's state has been to-night--he, John, Berry, and Boylett, all
taking money and going mad together--you _cannot_ imagine. They turned
away hundreds, sold all the books, rolled on the ground of my room
knee-deep in checks, and made a perfect pantomime of the whole thing. He
has kept quite well, I am happy to say, and sends a hundred loves.

In great haste and fatigue.

Ever affectionately.

[Sidenote: Miss Dickens.]

MORRISON'S HOTEL, DUBLIN, _Monday, Aug. 23rd, 1858._

We had a nasty crossing here. We left Holyhead at one in the morning,
and got here at six. Arthur was incessantly sick the whole way. I was
not sick at all, but was in as healthy a condition otherwise as humanity
need be. We are in a beautiful hotel. Our sitting-room is exactly like
the drawing-room at the Peschiere in all its dimensions. I never saw two
rooms so exactly resembling one another in their proportions. Our
bedrooms too are excellent, and there are baths and all sorts of
comforts.

The Lord Lieutenant is away, and the place looks to me as if its
professional life were away too. Nevertheless, there are numbers of
people in the streets. Somehow, I hardly seem to think we are going to
do enormously here; but I have scarcely any reason for supposing so
(except that a good many houses are shut up); and I _know_ nothing about
it, for Arthur is now gone to the agent and to the room. The men came by
boat direct from Liverpool. They had a rough passage, were all ill, and
did not get here till noon yesterday. Donnybrook Fair, or what remains
of it, is going on, within two or three miles of Dublin. They went out
there yesterday in a jaunting-car, and John described it to us at
dinner-time (with his eyebrows lifted up, and his legs well asunder), as
"Johnny Brooks's Fair;" at which Arthur, who was drinking bitter ale,
nearly laughed himself to death. Berry is always unfortunate, and when I
asked what had happened to Berry on board the steamboat, it appeared
that "an Irish gentleman which was drunk, and fancied himself the
captain, wanted to knock Berry down."

I am surprised by finding this