under a more complex
system. It is very smooth sailing hitherto down here. No velvet
waistcoat and ever-lustrous pumps to be considered; no bon mots got up;
no information necessary. There is a pipe for the parsons to smoke, and
quite as much bon mots, literature, and philosophy as they care for
without any trouble at all. If we could but feed our poor! It is now
the 8th of December; it has blown a most desperate East wind, all razors;
a wind like one of those knives one sees at shops in London, with 365
blades all drawn and pointed; the wheat is all sown; the fallows cannot
be ploughed. What are all the poor folks to do during the winter? And
they persist in having the same enormous families they used to do; a
woman came to me two days ago who had seventeen children! What farmers
are to employ all these? What Landlord can find room for them? The law
of Generation must be repealed. The London press does nothing but rail
at us poor country folks for our cruelty. I am glad they do so; for
there is much to be set right. But I want to know if the Editor of the
Times is more attentive to his devils, their wives and families, than our
squires and squiresses and parsons are to their fellow parishioners.
Punch also assumes a tone of virtuous satire, from the mouth of Mr.
Douglas Jerrold! It is easy to sit in arm chairs at a club in Pall Mall
and rail on the stupidity and brutality of those in High Suffolk.

Come, I have got more than two ideas into this sheet; but I don't know if
you won't dislike them worse than mere nothing. But I was determined to
fill my letter. Yes, you are to know that I slept at Woodbridge last
night, went to church there this morning, where every one sat with a
purple nose, and heard a dismal well-meant sermon; and the organ blew us
out with one grand idea at all events, one of old Handel's Coronation
Anthems; that I dined early, also in Woodbridge; and walked up here with
a tremendous East wind blowing sleet in my face from over the German Sea,
that I found your letter when I entered my room; and reading it through,
determined to spin you off a sheet incontinently, and lo! here it is! Now
or never! I shall now have my tea in, and read over your letter again
while at it. You are quite right in saying that Gravesend excursions
with you do me good. When did I doubt it? I remember them with great
pleasure; few of my travels so much so. I like a short journey in good
company; and I lik