ook a
ninth. He held it in his mouth and looked round the bed strangely.
"Not a bad one, is it?" says the doctor. The patient shook his head,
rubbed his trembling hand upon his stomach, bolted the oyster, and
fell back--dead. They buried him in the prison yard, and paved his
grave with oyster-shells.

We are all well and hearty, and have already begun to wonder what
time next year you and Mrs. Felton and Dr. Howe will come across the
briny sea together. To-morrow we go to the seaside for two months. I
am looking out for news of Longfellow, and shall be delighted when I
know that he is on his way to London and this house.

I am bent upon striking at the piratical newspapers with the
sharpest edge I can put upon my small axe, and hope in the next
session of Parliament to stop their entrance into Canada. For the
first time within the memory of man, the professors of English
literature seem disposed to act together on this question. It is a
good thing to aggravate a scoundrel, if one can do nothing else, and
I think we can make them smart a little in this way....

I wish you had been at Greenwich the other day, where a party of
friends gave me a private dinner; public ones I have refused. C. was
perfectly wild at the reunion, and, after singing all manner of
marine songs, wound up the entertainment by coming home (six miles)
in a little open phaeton of mine, _on his head_, to the mingled
delight and indignation of the metropolitan police. We were very
jovial indeed; and I assure you that I drank your health with
fearful vigor and energy.

On board that ship coming home I established a club, called the
United Vagabonds, to the large amusement of the rest of the
passengers. This holy brotherhood committed all kinds of
absurdities, and dined always, with a variety of solemn forms, at
one end of the table, below the mast, away from all the rest. The
captain being ill when we were three or four days out, I produced my
medicine-chest and recovered him. We had a few more sick men after
that, and I went round "the wards" every day in great state,
accompanied by two Vagabonds, habited as Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer,
bearing enormous rolls of plaster and huge pairs of scissors. We
were really very merry all the way, breakfasted in one party at
Liverpool, shook hands, and parted most cord