uch depressed during the first days of
my stay at Bannisters, but this gloom passing off, and I am resuming my
more habitual buoyancy of temper....

BANNISTERS, December 22d.

If you don't promise me good, I mean wholesome, food, when I come to St.
Leonard's, I won't stay with you a minute. I have, for some years past,
considered that there was an important deficiency in my human nature,
which instead of consisting, like that of most people, of three
elements, is wanting in what I should call the middle link between its
lowest and highest extremities. Thus, for some time now, I have felt
intimately convinced that I had senses and a soul, but no heart; but I
have now further come to the conclusion that I have neither sense, soul,
nor heart, and am, indeed, nothing but a stomach.... Now, don't retort
upon me with starving populations, in and out of poor-houses; and your
grand national starving experiment in Ireland; neither try to make me
adopt it when I come to St. Leonard's, for I won't....

You will be glad to hear that poor old Mrs. Fitzhugh is better these two
or three last days, and, except for the weakness and irritation in her
eyes, is tolerably well and comfortable; and I, having recovered from
the blue devils, am able to amuse her a little better than I did when
first I came. I am glad you mentioned that your comment on my health was
meant for _fun_. A man sat by me in Edinburgh at dinner one day, and
asked me if I had ever read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," which
frightened me into an indigestion; and when I told Mr. Combe of it, he
gave a sad Scotch laugh, like a postman's knock, "Ha! ha! just like
Farquharson's dry humor!"

You say that, as far as my own constitution is concerned, you believe my
theories are right. Pray, my dear, did I ever attempt to meddle with
your constitution? Permit me to say that the hygienic faith I profess
has this in common with my other persuasions, that I am no propagandist,
and neither seek nor desire proselytes. No, my dear friend, it is the
orthodox medicine-takers, not the heterodox medicine-haters, who are
always thrusting their pill-boxes and physic-bottles into their friends'
bodies, and dragging or driving their souls to heaven or hell. If my
physical doctrine saves my body, and my religious doctrine my soul,
alive, it is all I ask of it; and you, and all other of my
fellow-creatures, I deliver over to your own devices,