a despatch-box full of
kind remembrances in return. He is in a great state of delight with
the first volume of my American book (which I have just finished),
and swears loudly by it. It is _True_, and Honorable I know, and I
shall hope to send it you, complete, by the first steamer in
November.

Your description of the porter and the carpet-bags prepares me for a
first-rate facetious novel, brimful of the richest humor, on which I
have no doubt you are engaged. What is it called? Sometimes I
imagine the title-page thus:--

OYSTERS
IN
EVERY STYLE
or
OPENINGS
OF
LIFE
by
YOUNG DANDO.

As to the man putting the luggage on his head, as a sort of sign, I
adopt it from this hour.

I date this from London, where I have come, as a good, profligate,
graceless bachelor, for a day or two; leaving my wife and babbies at
the seaside.... Heavens! if you were but here at this minute! A
piece of salmon and a steak are cooking in the kitchen; it's a very
wet day, and I have had a fire lighted; the wine sparkles on a
side-table; the room looks the more snug from being the only
undismantled one in the house; plates are warming for Forster and
Maclise, whose knock I am momentarily expecting; that groom I told
you of, who never comes into the house, except when we are all out
of town, is walking about in his shirt-sleeves without the smallest
consciousness of impropriety; a great mound of proofs are waiting to
be read aloud, after dinner. With what a shout I would clap you down
into the easiest chair, my genial Felton, if you would but appear,
and order you a pair of slippers instantly!

Since I have written this, the aforesaid groom--a very small man (as
the fashion is) with fiery-red hair (as the fashion is _not_)--has
looked very hard at me and fluttered about me at the same time, like
a giant butterfly. After a pause, he says, in a Sam Wellerish kind
of way: "I vent to the club this mornin', sir. There vorn't no
letters, sir." "Very good. Topping." "How's missis, sir?" "Pretty
well, Topping." "Glad to hear it, sir. My missis ain't wery well,
sir." "No!" "No, sir, she's a goin', sir, to have a hincrease wery
soon, and it makes her rather nervous, sir; and ven a young voman
gets at all down at sich a time, sir, she goes dow