f an
overnight's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in
he wandered the other morning drunk with last night and with a
superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came
staggering under his double burden, like trees in Java, bearing at once
blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other
traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament.
Some wretched calico that he had mopped his poor oozy front with, had
rendered up its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash
it, but swore it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of
indigo; and set up a laugh which I did not think the lungs of mortal man
were competent to. It was like a thousand people laughing, or the Goblin
Page. He imagined afterwards that the whole office had been laughing at
him, so strange did his own sounds strike upon his _non_sensorium. But
Tommy has laughed his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself
reduced from an abused income of L600 per annum to one sixth of the sum,
after thirty-six years' tolerably good service. The quality of mercy was
not strained in his behalf; the gentle dews dropped not on him from
heaven. It just came across me that I was writing to Canton. Will you
drop in to-morrow night? Fanny Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat
us. Mrs. _Gold_ is well, but proves "uncoined," as the lovers about
Wheathampstead would say.

I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down to a quiet letter for
many years. I have not been interrupted above four times. I wrote a
letter the other day in alternate lines, black ink and red, and you
cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas. Next Monday is
Whit-Monday. What a reflection! Twelve years ago, and I should have kept
that and the following holiday in the fields a-maying. All of those
pretty pastoral delights are over. This dead, everlasting dead
desk,--how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down! This dead wood of
the desk instead of your living trees! But then, again, I hate the
joskins, _a name for Hertfordshire bumpkins_. Each state of life has its
inconvenience; but then, again, mine has more than one. Not that I
repine, or grudge, or murmur at my destiny. I have meat and drink, and
decent apparel,--I shall, at least, when I get a new hat,

A red-haired man just interrupted me. He has broke the current of my
thoughts, I haven't a word to add, I don't know why I send this let