ohn calls "them two old Paddies," and of whom he says,
that he "never see nothing like them (snigger) hold idiots" (snigger).
They bow and walk backwards before the grandees, and our men hustle them
while they are doing it.

We walked out last night, with the intention of going to the theatre;
but the Piccolomini establishment (they were doing the "Lucia") looked
so horribly like a very bad jail, and the Queen's looked so
blackguardly, that we came back again, and went to bed. I seem to be
always either in a railway carriage, or reading, or going to bed. I get
so knocked up, whenever I have a minute to remember it, that then I go
to bed as a matter of course.

I send my love to the noble Plorn, and to all the boys. To dear Mamie
and Katie, and to yourself of course, in the first degree. I am looking
forward to the last Irish reading on Thursday, with great impatience.
But when we shall have turned this week, once knocked off Belfast, I
shall see land, and shall (like poor Timber in the days of old) "keep up
a good heart." I get so wonderfully hot every night in my dress clothes,
that they positively won't dry in the short interval they get, and I
have been obliged to write to Doudney's to make me another suit, that I
may have a constant change.

Ever, my dearest Georgy, most affectionately.

[Sidenote: Miss Dickens.]

BELFAST, _Saturday, Aug. 28th, 1858._

When I went down to the Rotunda at Dublin on Thursday night, I said to
Arthur, who came rushing at me: "You needn't tell me. I know all about
it." The moment I had come out of the door of the hotel (a mile off), I
had come against the stream of people turned away. I had struggled
against it to the room. There, the crowd in all the lobbies and passages
was so great, that I had a difficulty in getting in. They had broken all
the glass in the pay-boxes. They had offered frantic prices for stalls.
Eleven bank-notes were thrust into that pay-box (Arthur saw them) at one
time, for eleven stalls. Our men were flattened against walls, and
squeezed against beams. Ladies stood all night with their chins against
my platform. Other ladies sat all night upon my steps. You never saw
such a sight. And the reading went tremendously! It is much to be
regretted that we troubled ourselves to go anywhere else in Ireland. We
turned away people enough to make immense houses for a week.

We arrived here yesterday at two. The