intent upon
reading it.

"My sister's verses." I think these would probably be the lines on Emma
learning Latin which I have quoted above.

Here should come a very pleasant letter from Lamb to Dodwell, of the
India House, dated October 7, 1827. Lamb thanks Dodwell, to whom there
is an earlier letter extant, for a pig. He first describes his new house
at Enfield, and then breaks off about the cooking of the pig, bidding
Becky do it "nice and _crips_." The rest is chaff concerning the India
House and Dodwell's fellow-clerks.]

LETTER 436

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[No date. ? Oct., 1827.]

Dear Hone,--having occasion to write to Clarke I put in a bit to you. I
see no Extracts in this N'o. You should have three sets in hand, one
long one in particular from Atreus and Thyestes, terribly fine. Don't
spare 'em; with fragments, divided as you please, they'll hold out to
Xmas. What I have to say is enjoined me most seriously to say to you by
Moxon. Their country customers grieve at getting the Table Book so late.
It is indispensable it should appear on Friday. Do it but _once_, &
you'll never know the difference.

FABLE

A boy at my school, a cunning fox, for one penny ensured himself a hot
roll & butter every morning for ever. Some favor'd ones were allowed a
roll & butter to their breakfasts. He had none. But he bought one one
morning. What did he do? He did not eat it, but cutting it in two, sold
each one of the halves to a half-breakfasted Blue Boy for _his_ whole
roll to-morrow. The next day he had a whole roll to eat, and two halves
to swap with other two boys, who had eat their cake & were still not
satiated, for whole ones to-morrow. So on ad infinitum. By one morning's
abstinence he feasted seven years after.

APPLICATION

Bring out the next N'o. on Friday, for country correspondents' sake.
I[t] will be one piece of exertion, and you will go right ever after,
for you will have just the time you had before, to bring it out ever
after by the Friday.

You don't know the difference in getting a thing early. Your
correspondents are your authors. You don't know how an author frets to
know the world has got his contribution, when he finds it not on his
breakfast table.

ONCE in this case is EVER without a grain of trouble afterw'ds.

I won't like you or speak to you if you don't try it once.

Yours, on that condition,

C. LAMB.

[This letter is dated by Mr. Hazlitt conjecturally 1826, but I t