MY DEAR FATHER,--I am alive and unmarried. Providence has watched
over me in these respects; but I have had narrow escapes. Hitherto I
have not acquired much worldly wisdom in my travels. It is true that
I have been paid two shillings as a day labourer, and, in fact, have
fairly earned at least six shillings more; but against that additional
claim I generously set off, as an equivalent, my board and lodging.
On the other hand, I have spent forty-five pounds out of the fifty
which I devoted to the purchase of experience. But I hope you will be
a gainer by that investment. Send an order to Mr. William Somers,
basket-maker, Graveleigh, -----shire, for the hampers and game-baskets
you require, and I undertake to say that you will save twenty per cent
on that article (all expenses of carriage deducted) and do a good
action into the bargain. You know, from long habit, what a good
action is worth better than I do. I dare say you will be more pleased
to learn than I am to record the fact that I have been again decoyed
into the society of ladies and gentlemen, and have accepted an
invitation to pass a few days at Neesdale Park with Mr.
Travers,--christened Leopold, who calls you "his old friend,"--a term
which I take for granted belongs to that class of poetic exaggeration
in which the "dears" and "darlings" of conjugal intercourse may be
categorized. Having for that visit no suitable garments in my
knapsack, kindly tell Jenkes to forward me a portmanteau full of those
which I habitually wore as Kenelm Chillingly, directed to me at
"Neesdale Park, near Beaverston." Let me find it there on Wednesday.

I leave this place to-morrow morning in company with a friend of the
name of Bowles: no relation to the reverend gentleman of that name who
held the doctrine that a poet should bore us to death with
fiddle-faddle minutia of natural objects in preference to that study
of the insignificant creature Man, in his relations to his species, to