BANNISTERS, Tuesday, 13th, 1846.

You say, my dear Hal, that you see Emily and me perpetually, in various
positions, holding various conversations. Had you a vision of us this
morning, by the comfortable fire in my room, I reading, and she
listening to, your letter?...

Thank you, my dear friend, for your _flagellatory_ recipe, which I beg
to decline. The sponging with vinegar and water I do practise every
morning, and as I persevere in it until my fingers can hardly hold the
sponge for cold, and my throat is as crimson as if it were flayed, I
hope it will answer the same purpose as lashing myself, which I object
to, partly, I suppose, for Sancho Panza's reasons, and partly because of
its great resemblance to, not to say identity with, the superstitious
practices of the idolatrous and benighted Roman Catholic Church.

The amount of medical advice and assistance which I have received since
I have been restored to the affectionate society of my dear Emily and
her kind mother is hardly to be told....

I shall not answer your letter seriously: I am convinced it is bad for
you. I believe Dorothy never laughs (you know the Devil in "Faust" says
the Almighty never does), and I am satisfied that what you are
languishing for is a little _absurdity_, which she cannot by any
possibility afford you.

How I wish I was with you! because, though I am no more absurd than that
sublime woman Dorothy, I at least know how to take the best advantage,
both for you and myself, of the great gifts you possess in that line;
and the mutual sweetness and utility of our intercourse is, I am
persuaded, principally owing to the judicious use I make of the
extraordinary amount of absurdity it has pleased Heaven to vouchsafe
you, my most precious friend.

And so you think I shall have plenty of "admiring friends" for my "gay
hours" (!!!!), but shall be glad to fall back, in my less delightful
ones, upon the devoted affection of--you? (Oh, Harriet, oughtn't you to
be ashamed of yourself?)

I have more friends, I humbly and devoutly thank God for them, than
almost any one I know; those I depend upon I can count upon the fingers
of one hand, and you are the _thumb_.

In the useless struggle you persist in making to be reasonable (why
don't you give it up? I've known you hopelessly at it now forty years or
thereabouts), you really make use of very singular and, permit me to
say, inappropriate language. After detail