r call me, if I were to accept
and not come!

No, no, no. Be still my soul. Be virtuous, eminent author. Do _not_
accept, my Dickens. She is to come to Gad's Hill with her spouse. Await
her _there_, my child. (Thus the voice of wisdom.)

My dear Lady Olliffe,
Ever affectionately yours.

[Sidenote: Mrs. Milner Gibson.]

GAD'S HILL, _Monday, Eighth July, 1861._

MY DEAR MRS. GIBSON,

I want very affectionately and earnestly to congratulate you on your
eldest daughter's approaching marriage. Up to the moment when Mary told
me of it, I had foolishly thought of her always as the pretty little
girl with the frank loving face whom I saw last on the sands at
Broadstairs. I rubbed my eyes and woke at the words "going to be
married," and found I had been walking in my sleep some years.

I want to thank you also for thinking of me on the occasion, but I feel
that I am better away from it. I should really have a misgiving that I
was a sort of shadow on a young marriage, and you will understand me
when I say so, and no more.

But I shall be with you in the best part of myself, in the warmth of
sympathy and friendship--and I send my love to the dear girl, and
devoutly hope and believe that she will be happy. The face that I
remember with perfect accuracy, and could draw here, if I could draw at
all, was made to be happy and to make a husband so.

I wonder whether you ever travel by railroad in these times! I wish Mary
could tempt you to come by any road to this little place.

With kind regard to Milner Gibson, believe me ever,
Affectionately and faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Tuesday, Seventeenth September, 1861._

MY DEAR BULWER LYTTON,

I am delighted with your letter of yesterday--delighted with the
addition to the length of the story--delighted with your account of it,
and your interest in it--and even more than delighted by what you say of
our working in company.

Not one dissentient voice has reached me respecting it. Through the
dullest time of the year we held our circulation most gallantly. And it
could not have taken a better hold. I saw Forster on Friday (newly
returned from thousands of provincial lunatics), and he really was more
impressed than