e confined with severe
fevers: and two more, who belong to the Tower Militia, expect to have
marching orders on Friday. Now, six are absolutely necessary. I have
already asked and obtained two young hands to supply the loss of the
_feverites;_ and with the other prospect before me, you may believe I
cannot decently ask leave of absence for myself. All I can promise (and
I do promise with the sincerity of Saint Peter, and the contrition of
sinner Peter if I fail) [is] that I will come _the very first spare
week_, and go nowhere till I have been at Cambridge. No matter if you
are in a state of pupilage when I come; for I can employ myself in
Cambridge very pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not libraries,
halls, colleges, books, pictures, statues? I wish you had made London in
your way. There is an exhibition quite uncommon in Europe, which could
not have escaped _your genius_,--a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length,
and the thickness of a big leg. I went to see it last night by
candlelight. We were ushered into a room very little bigger than ours at
Pentonville. A man and woman and four boys live in this room, joint
tenants with nine snakes, most of them such as no remedy has been
discovered for their bite. We walked into the middle, which is formed by
a half-moon of wired boxes, all mansions of snakes,--whip-snakes,
thunder-snakes, pig-nose-snakes, American vipers, and _this monster_. He
lies curled up in folds; and immediately a stranger enters (for he is
used to the family, and sees them play at cards) he set up a rattle like
a watchman's in London, or near as loud, and reared up a head, from the
midst of these folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every
sign a snake can show of irritation. I had the foolish curiosity to
strike the wires with my finger, and the devil flew at me with his
toad-mouth wide open: the inside of his mouth is quite white. I had got
my finger away, nor could he well have bit me with his big mouth, which
would have been certain death in five minutes. But it frightened me so
much that I did not recover my voice for a minute's space. I forgot, in
my fear, that he was secured. You would have forgot too, for 't is
incredible how such a monster can be confined in small gauzy-looking
wires. I dreamed of snakes in the night. I wish to Heaven you could see
it. He absolutely swelled with passion to the bigness of a large thigh.
I could not retreat without infringing on another box, and ju