s have done the like.

I am in great health and spirits and powdering away at Chuzzlewit,
with all manner of facetiousness rising up before me as I go on. As
to news, I have really none, saving that ---- (who never took any
exercise in his life) has been laid up with rheumatism for weeks
past, but is now, I hope, getting better. My little captain, as I
call him,--he who took me out, I mean, and with whom I had that
adventure of the cork soles,--has been in London too, and seeing all
the lions under my escort. Good heavens! I wish you could have seen
certain other mahogany-faced men (also captains) who used to call
here for him in the morning, and bear him off to docks and rivers
and all sorts of queer places, whence he always returned late at
night, with rum-and-water tear-drops in his eyes, and a complication
of punchy smells in his mouth! He was better than a comedy to us,
having marvellous ways of tying his pocket-handkerchief round his
neck at dinner-time in a kind of jolly embarrassment, and then
forgetting what he had done with it; also of singing songs to wrong
tunes, and calling land objects by sea names, and never knowing
what o'clock it was, but taking midnight for seven in the evening;
with many other sailor oddities, all full of honesty, manliness, and
good temper. We took him to Drury Lane Theatre to see Much Ado About
Nothing. But I never could find out what he meant by turning round,
after he had watched the first two scenes with great attention, and
inquiring "whether it was a Polish piece." ...

On the 4th of April I am going to preside at a public dinner for the
benefit of the printers; and if you were a guest at that table,
wouldn't I smite you on the shoulder, harder than ever I rapped the
well-beloved back of Washington Irving at the City Hotel in New
York!

You were asking me--I love to say asking, as if we could talk
together--about Maclise. He is such a discursive fellow, and so
eccentric in his might, that on a mental review of his pictures I
can hardly tell you of them as leading to any one strong purpose.
But the annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy comes off in May, and
then I will endeavor to give you some notion of him. He is a
tremendous creature, and might do anything. But, like all tremendous
creatures, he takes his own way, and flies off at