uals be not slipping.

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use to ask you to
come and partake of 'em; else there is a steam vessel.

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it
will be refused, or worse, I never had luck with anything my name
was put to.

Oh, I am so poorly! I _waked_ it at my cousin's the bookbinder, who is
now with God; or if he is not,'tis no fault of mine.

We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. Patmore. By the way, I
like her.

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them if you can. They are like little
Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.

How sick I am!--not of the world, but of the Widow Shrub. She's sworn
under L6,000; but I think she perjured herself. She howls in E _la_, and
I comfort her in B flat. You understand music?

If you haven't got Massinger, you have nothing to do but go to the first
Bibliotheque you can light upon at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford's
edition); and if they haven't got it, you can have "Athalie," par
Monsieur Racine, and make the best of it. But that "Old Law" is
delicious.

"No shrimps!" (that's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles
are to be done.)

I am uncertain where this wandering letter may reach you. What you mean
by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage? So I
do,--to Dover.

We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons. She was
howling,--part howling, and part giving directions to the proctor,--when
crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks
grin, and I grinned, and the widow tittered, and then I knew that she
was not inconsolable. Mary was more frightened than hurt.

She'd make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean the widow).

"If he bring but a _relict_ away,
He is happy, nor heard to complain."

SHENSTONE.

Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his
wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it rather an agreeable
excrescence,--like his poetry, redundant. Hone has hanged himself for
debt. Godwin was taken up for picking pockets. Moxon has fallen in love
with Emma, our nut-brown maid. Becky takes to bad courses. Her father
was blown up in a steam machine. The coroner found it "insanity." I
should not like him to sit on my letter.

Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic, classical? Do try and get
some frogs. You must ask for "grenouilles" (green eels). They don't
understand "frogs