letter to Catherine, as I am referred
to in it.

The "Walk" is not my writing. It is very well done by a close imitator.
Why I found myself so "used up" after "Hard Times" I scarcely know,
perhaps because I intended to do nothing in that way for a year, when
the idea laid hold of me by the throat in a very violent manner, and
because the compression and close condensation necessary for that
disjointed form of publication gave me perpetual trouble. But I really
was tired, which is a result so very incomprehensible that I can't
forget it. I have passed an idle autumn in a beautiful situation, and am
dreadfully brown and big. For further particulars of Boulogne, see "Our
French Watering Place," in this present week of "Household Words," which
contains a faithful portrait of our landlord there.

If you carry out that bright Croydon idea, rely on our glad
co-operation, only let me know all about it a few days beforehand; and
if you feel equal to the contemplation of the moustache (which has been
cut lately) it will give us the heartiest pleasure to come and meet you.
This in spite of the terrific duffery of the Crystal Palace. It is a
very remarkable thing in itself; but to have so very large a building
continually crammed down one's throat, and to find it a new page in "The
Whole Duty of Man" to go there, is a little more than even I (and you
know how amiable I am) can endure.

You always like to know what I am going to do, so I beg to announce that
on the 19th of December I am going to read the "Carol" at Reading, where
I undertook the presidency of the Literary Institution on the death of
poor dear Talfourd. Then I am going on to Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, to
do the like for another institution, which is one of the few remaining
pleasures of Macready's life. Then I am coming home for Christmas Day.
Then I believe I must go to Bradford, in Yorkshire, to read once more to
a little fireside party of four thousand. Then I am coming home again
to get up a new little version of "The Children in the Wood" (yet to be
written, by-the-bye), for the children to act on Charley's birthday.

I am full of mixed feeling about the war--admiration of our valiant men,
burning desires to cut the Emperor of Russia's throat, and something
like despair to see how the old cannon-smoke and blood-mists obscure the
wrongs and sufferings of the people at home. When I consider the
Patriotic Fund on the one hand, and on the other the poverty and
w