earty interest in these proceedings. But it would be idle to pursue
that theme, so let it pass.

The wig and whiskers are in a state of the highest preservation. The
play comes off next Wednesday night, the 25th. What would I give to see
you in the front row of the centre box, your spectacles gleaming not
unlike those of my dear friend Pickwick, your face radiant with as broad
a grin as a staid professor may indulge in, and your very coat,
waistcoat, and shoulders expressive of what we should take together when
the performance was over! I would give something (not so much, but still
a good round sum) if you could only stumble into that very dark and
dusty theatre in the daytime (at any minute between twelve and three),
and see me with my coat off, the stage manager and universal director,
urging impracticable ladies and impossible gentlemen on to the very
confines of insanity, 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, endeavouring 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 labour 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.

Oh, 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