1838-39. TROUBLES OF A LETTER WRITER. 195 



lips pursing and pouting, and lines moving from corner to corner 

 of your friend's face ? And what aid lendeth the sketch of my 

 viznomy in helping you to realize my April- day countenance, 

 and fill up the blanks of my written talk to you, by thinking of 

 the look which tells the sentence before the words come, and 

 might teach us to keep our lips closed, and be content to make 

 faces at each other? A young fellow whom I met at Willow 

 Grove the other evening, asked if I were not the brother of one 

 who had gone to London. He had met you somewhere, and he 

 dilated at great length on the ' exceeding amiability of - - ! ! 

 Hang amiability ! I get daily more afraid of what would be 

 better christened ' selfish indolence.' I think better of perverse- 

 ness, and eschew the friendship of every one who does not, at 

 times, take indulgence in pride, or satire, or some other mis- 

 named vice of wicked human nature. I will become a Free 

 Mason, or learn the Egyptian hieroglyphics. I will invent a 

 system of symbols, and chalk down eyes and noses, and lips 

 and brows, and tell my tale by some other way than blots and 

 blurs, and stops and commas, and scrawly sentences. It is no 

 use writing you news ; every fact is twisted and set awry before 

 it reaches you. Our epistles always set off at the same time, 

 and, like the fleets of Bonaparte and Nelson, which crossed each 

 other in the dark seas some half dozen times and did not know 

 it, come athwart each other, and pass on to spread false intel- 

 ligence among us. A great pile of unanswered questions weigh 

 down my faculties, and would rub the nib off my pen if I tried 

 to reply to them. Think not that you know anything about us 

 here. Publish nothing that reaches you. Be very wary of 

 reflecting on the ideas you gather from my letters. The very 

 moment after I send a letter to you, something arises to alter 

 the truth of what I have written ; and the next morning a letter 

 comes from yourself, which by half anticipating, yet in a different 

 way, what I had been writing about to you, tumbles me down 

 from the height of satisfaction, where I had been regaling myself 

 with the idea that I had cleared scores with Daniel. And yet 

 the crossing of letters (not ladies' crossing, which I love not) 

 sometimes effects good, as in the present case ; for, when I wrote 

 the last letter, I had abandoned the idea of going to Birmingham. 



