grams, puns--these all came in on the town part, and the
thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions.

From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not for any
thing there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure
of reading a London newspaper. The poets are as well to listen to, any
thing high may, nay must, be read out--you read it to yourself with an
imaginary auditor--but the light paragraphs must be glid over by the
proper eye, mouthing mumbles their gossamery substance. 'Tis these
trifles I should mourn in fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam
of comfort I receive here, it comes from rich Cathay with tidings of
mankind. Yet I could not attend to it read out by the most beloved
voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of
Tobias inclosed in a whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good
wishes! The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your head
against something. Do not do so. For your head (I do not flatter) is not
a nob, or the top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin--unless a
Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a Recluse out of it, then would I
bid the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed skinker.
What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! Mary must squeeze out a
line propria manu, but indeed her fingers have been incorrigibly nervous
to letter writing for a long interval. 'Twill please you all to hear
that, tho' I fret like a lion in a net, her present health and spirits
are better than they have been for some time past: she is absolutely
three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since we have adopted
this boarding plan. Our providers are an honest pair, dame Westwood and
her husband--he, when the light of prosperity shined on them, a
moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with
something under a competence, writes himself parcel gentleman, hath
borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten,
sighs only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on his hands
about 15, whom he finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and
then checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not
meaning to be heard, "I have married my daughter however,"--takes the
weather as it comes, outsides it to town in severest season, and a'
winter nights tells old stories not tending to literature, how
comfortable to author-rid folks! and has _one an