ON THE DEATH OF AN INFANT.

MY DEAR MARK,

I will call for you at two, and go with you to Highgate, by all means.

Leech and I called on Tuesday evening and left our loves. I have not
written to you since, because I thought it best to leave you quiet for a
day. I have no need to tell you, my dear fellow, that my thoughts have
been constantly with you, and that I have not forgotten (and never shall
forget) who sat up with me one night when a little place in my house was
left empty.

It is hard to lose any child, but there are many blessed sources of
consolation in the loss of a baby. There is a beautiful thought in
Fielding's "Journey from this World to the Next," where the baby he had
lost many years before was found by him all radiant and happy, building
him a bower in the Elysian Fields where they were to live together when
he came.

Ever affectionately yours.

P.S.--Our kindest loves to Mrs. Lemon.

[Sidenote: Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, May 20th, 1855._

MY DEAR STANNY,

I have a little lark in contemplation, if you will help it to fly.

Collins has done a melodrama (a regular old-style melodrama), in which
there is a very good notion. I am going to act it, as an experiment, in
the children's theatre here--I, Mark, Collins, Egg, and my daughter
Mary, the whole _dram. pers._; our families and yours the whole
audience; for I want to make the stage large and shouldn't have room for
above five-and-twenty spectators. Now there is only one scene in the
piece, and that, my tarry lad, is the inside of a lighthouse. Will you
come and paint it for us one night, and we'll all turn to and help? It
is a mere wall, of course, but Mark and I have sworn that you must do
it. If you will say yes, I should like to have the tiny flats made,
after you have looked at the place, and not before. On Wednesday in this
week I am good for a steak and the play, if you will make your own
appointment here; or any day next week except Thursday. Write me a line
in reply. We mean to burst on an astonished world with the melodrama,
without any note of preparation. So don't say a syllable to Forster if
you should happen to see him.

Ever affectionately yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Tuesday Afternoon, Six o'clock, May 22nd, 1855._

MY DEAR STANNY