, shouting
and driving about, in my own person, to an extent which would
justify any philanthropic stranger in clapping me into a
strait-waistcoat without further inquiry, endeavoring to goad H.
into some dim and faint understanding of a prompter's duties, and
struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and
inextricable entanglement of speech and action as you would grow
giddy in contemplating. We perform A Roland for an Oliver, A good
Night's Rest, and Deaf as a Post. This kind of voluntary hard labor
used to be my great delight. The _furor_ has come strong upon me
again, and I begin to be once more of opinion that nature intended
me for the lessee of a national theatre, and that pen, ink, and
paper have spoiled a manager.

O, how I look forward across that rolling water to home and its
small tenantry! How I busy myself in thinking how my books look, and
where the tables are, and in what positions the chairs stand
relatively to the other furniture; and whether we shall get there in
the night, or in the morning, or in the afternoon; and whether we
shall be able to surprise them, or whether they will be too sharply
looking out for us; and what our pets will say; and how they'll
look, and who will be the first to come and shake hands, and so
forth! If I could but tell you how I have set my heart on rushing
into Forster's study (he is my great friend, and writes at the
bottom of all his letters, "My love to Felton"), and into Maclise's
painting-room, and into Macready's managerial ditto, without a
moment's warning, and how I picture every little trait and
circumstance of our arrival to myself, down to the very color of the
bow on the cook's cap, you would almost think I had changed places
with my eldest son, and was still in pantaloons of the thinnest
texture. I left all these things--God only knows what a love I have
for them--as coolly and calmly as any animated cucumber; but when I
come upon them again I shall have lost all power of self-restraint,
and shall as certainly make a fool of myself (in the popular meaning
of that expression) as ever Grimaldi did in his way, or George III.
in his.

And not the less so, dear Felton, for having found some warm hearts,
and left some instalments of earnest and sincere affection, behind
me on this continent. And whe