and annoyance it would bring with it, I never would have undertaken
it. The worst of it is, I have to write pieces now and then to fill up
gaps."

More and more his old friends grew dear to him as the years passed and
"the goddess Neuralgia," as he called his malady, kept him chiefly at
home. He wrote in 1877:--

"When are you coming back from your Cottage
on the Cliffs? The trees on the Common and the fountains are calling
for you.

"'Thee, Tityrus, even the pine-trees,
The very fountains, the very
Copses are calling.'

Perhaps also your creditors. At all events I am, who am your debtor."

The days were fast approaching when the old things must pass away. He
wrote tenderly:--

"I am sorry to hear that you are not quite yourself. I sympathize with
you, for I am somebody else. It is the two W's, Work and Weather, that
are playing the mischief with us.... You must not open a book; you
must not even look at an inkstand. These are both contraband articles,
upon which we have to pay heavy duties. We cannot smuggle them in.
Nature's custom-house officers are too much on the alert."

In 1880 he again wrote, describing the wedding of the daughter of an
old friend:--