to-morrow. The manager has made an arrangement with me to act at his
theatres at Lynn and Cambridge next week, so that instead of returning
to London the day after to-morrow, I shall not do so until Friday,
28th....

We have dismal weather, snow on the ground, and blackness in the skies.
My poor Hayes has got the influenza too, and goes hacking and snivelling
at my heels like an unpleasant echo. I shall be thankful for both our
sakes when our winter work is over, for the exposure is very great; and
though, of course, she has much less of it than I have, she bears it
worse, catches colds oftener, and keeps them longer than I do....

I should, I believe, find it very difficult indeed to be economical, and
yet I suppose that if I felt the duty and necessity of it I should be
more so than I am. The saving of money without any special motive for it
does not appear to me desirable, any more than self-denial without a
sufficient motive--and I do not call mere mortification such--appears to
me reasonable. I do not feel called upon to curtail the comforts of my
daily life, for in some respects it is always miserable, and in many
respects often inevitably very uncomfortable; and while I am laboring to
spare sacrifice and disgrace to others, I do not see any very strong
motive for not applying a sufficient portion of the money I work so hard
for, to make my wandering and homeless life as endurable as I can....

Your mode of living is without pretension, and without expenditure for
mere appearances; and I feel certain that appearances, and not the
positive and necessary comforts of life, such as sufficient firing and
food, are the heaviest expenses of gentlefolks.... If the life is more
than meat or raiment, which I quite agree to, meat and raiment are more
than platters and trimmings; and it is the style that half the time
necessitates the starvation....

Now I am at Yarmouth; though t'other side the page I was at Norwich. The
earth is white, the sea is black, the sky gray, and everything most
melancholy. I act here to-night, and to-morrow and on Sunday go on to
Lynn, where I act Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; and Thursday at
Cambridge. On Friday I go back to town, and on Saturday to Mrs. Grote's.
I am in just such a little room as those we used to pass in walking
along the Parade at St. Leonard's--a small ground-floor room, about
sixteen feet square, the side facing the sea, one large bow-window in
three compartments; just s