68 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, rv 



chickens, if you are well enough to scribble a bit. Give 

 my best love to Elizabeth and tell her I expect to see her 

 when I return. She must not leave you a desolate widow. 



Good-bye, my dearest. 



C. D. 



I was quite right in saying your scratched out passage 

 would give them plenty of work. Catherine, after having 

 drawn a chair to the window, cried out (as Susan says): 

 " Here is my work for the morning." She first ascertained 

 which were false tails and which real; she then found that 

 many false Hs had been introduced, which made her suspect 

 some word beginning with H. was important; and then on 

 the principle of transparency she deciphered ' corn law 

 rhyme," and so guessed the whole. Marianne wrote by 

 return of post in a transport of curiosity to know what it 

 meant. No doubt she well knew that the perseverance of 

 Shrewsbury was not to be baffled. 



Charles Darwin to Emma Darwin, 



Sunday [SHREWSBURY] [probably 13 March, 1842]. 



MY BEAR EMMA, 



I must go on complimenting you on your letters; it 

 makes me quite proud, reading them (with skippibus) to 

 my Father and Co. ... I know well you are rather a 

 naughty girl, and do not pipe enough about your good 

 old self. The other day my Father and all of us united 

 in chorus how much pleasanter the piping strain was than 

 the heroic remember that, though I wish / could remember 

 it less. . . . 



I have begun my letter rather late, as I and Caroline 

 have been compromising our educational differences, which 

 are much less than I anticipated. I will give a short 

 journal: on Friday I walked beyond Shelton Rough, to- 

 wards Ross Hall an immense walk for me. The day was 

 very boisterous, with great black clouds, and gleams of 

 light, and I felt a sensation of delight which I hardly ever 



