at a village ale-house a two days old newspaper. You have not seen
it before, but you resent the stale thing as an affront. This sort
of merchandise above all requires a quick return. A pun, and its
recognitory laugh, must be co-instantaneous. The one is the brisk
lightning, the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, and the
link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a friend's face as from a
mirror. Who would consult his sweet visnomy, if the polished surface
were two or three minutes (not to speak of twelve-months, my dear F.)
in giving back its copy?

I cannot image to myself where about you are. When I try to fix it,
Peter Wilkins's island comes across me. Sometimes you seem to be in
the _Hades_ of _Thieves_. I see Diogenes prying among you with his
perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be willing by this time to
give for the sight of an honest man! You must almost have forgotten
how _we_ look. And tell me, what your Sydneyites do? are they th**v*ng
all day long? Merciful heaven! what property can stand against such
a depredation! The kangaroos--your Aborigines--do they keep their
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those little short
fore-puds, looking like a lesson framed by nature to the pickpocket!
Marry, for diving into fobs they are rather lamely provided _a
priori_; but if the hue and cry were once up, they would show as fair
a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco-motor in the colony.--We
hear the most improbable tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that
the young Spartans among you are born with six fingers, which spoils
their scanning?--It must look very odd; but use reconciles. For their
scansion, it is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the greater part of
them, vile plagiarists.--Is there much difference to see to between
the son of a th**f, and the grandson? or where does the taint stop? Do