ght without a hope of the vision coming back
in one shape or other. And so it did. I went down into Yorkshire, and
finding it still present to me, in a strange scene and a strange bed, I
could not help mentioning the circumstance in a note I wrote home to
Kate. From that moment I have never dreamed of her once, though she is
so much in my thoughts at all times (especially when I am successful,
and have prospered in anything) that the recollection of her is an
essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as
the beating of my heart is.

Always affectionately.

[Sidenote: Professor Felton.]

BROADSTAIRS, KENT, _September 1st, 1843._

MY DEAR FELTON,

If I thought it in the nature of things that you and I could ever agree
on paper, touching a certain Chuzzlewitian question whereupon F----
tells me you have remarks to make, I should immediately walk into the
same, tooth and nail. But as I don't, I won't. Contenting myself with
this prediction, that one of these years and days, you will write or say
to me: "My dear Dickens, you were right, though rough, and did a world
of good, though you got most thoroughly hated for it." To which I shall
reply: "My dear Felton, I looked a long way off and not immediately
under my nose." . . . At which sentiment you will laugh, and I shall
laugh; and then (for I foresee this will all happen in my land) we shall
call for another pot of porter and two or three dozen of oysters.

Now, don't you in your own heart and soul quarrel with me for this long
silence? Not half so much as I quarrel with myself, I know; but if you
could read half the letters I write to you in imagination, you would
swear by me for the best of correspondents. The truth is, that when I
have done my morning's work, down goes my pen, and from that minute I
feel it a positive impossibility to take it up again, until imaginary
butchers and bakers wave me to my desk. I walk about brimful of letters,
facetious descriptions, touching morsels, and pathetic friendships, but
can't for the soul of me uncork myself. The post-office is my rock
ahead. My average number of letters that _must_ be written every day is,
at the least, a dozen. And you could no more know what I was writing to
you spiritually, from the perusal of the bodily thirteenth, than you
could tell from my hat what was going on in my head, or could read my
heart on