in `Never Too Late to Mend'? George Fielding, the hero,
is about going away from England to try his luck in Australia.
All his friends and relations are around him, expressing their sorrow
at his enforced voyage; all but his grandfather, aged ninety-two,
who sits stolid and mumbling in his armchair.

"`Grandfather!' shouts George into the deafened ears,
`I'm going a long journey; mayhap shall never see you again;
speak a word to me before I go!' Grandfather looks up,
brightens for a moment, and cackles feebly out: `George,
fetch me some SNUFF from where you're going. See now' (half whimpering),
`I'm out of snuff.' A good point in the way of illustration,
but not a pleasant picture."

On the 13th of September, ten days after Timrod's return to Columbia,
he wrote me the following note: --

"Dear P----: I have been too sick to write before, and am still too sick
to drop you more than a few lines. You will be surprised and pained
to hear that I have had a severe hemorrhage of the lungs.

"I did not come home an instant too soon. I found them without
money or provisions. Fortunately I brought with me a small sum.
I won't tell you how small, but six dollars of it was from
the editor of the `Opinion' for my last poem.

"I left your climate to my injury. But not only for the sake of my health,
I begin already to look back with longing regret to `Copse Hill'.
You have all made me feel as if I had TWO beloved homes!