well
with me and mine, thank God.

Last night my gardener came upon a man in the garden and fired. The man
returned the compliment by kicking him in the groin and causing him
great pain. I set off, with a great mastiff-bloodhound I have, in
pursuit. Couldn't find the evil-doer, but had the greatest difficulty in
preventing the dog from tearing two policemen down. They were coming
towards us with professional mystery, and he was in the air on his way
to the throat of an eminently respectable constable when I caught him.

My daughter Mary and her aunt Georgina send kindest regard and
remembrance. Katey and her husband are going to try London this winter,
but I rather doubt (for they are both delicate) their being able to
weather it out. It has been blowing here tremendously for a fortnight,
but to-day is like a spring day, and plenty of roses are growing over
the labourers' cottages. The _Great Eastern_ lies at her moorings beyond
the window where I write these words; looks very dull and unpromising. A
dark column of smoke from Chatham Dockyard, where the iron shipbuilding
is in progress, has a greater significance in it, I fancy.

[Sidenote: Miss Dickens.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Tuesday, Nov. 14th, 1865._

MY DEAREST MAMIE,

As you want to know my views of the Sphinx, here they are. But I have
only seen it once; and it is so extraordinarily well done, that it ought
to be observed closely several times.

Anyone who attentively notices the flower trick will see that the two
little high tables hung with drapery cover each a trap. Each of those
tables, during that trick, hides a confederate, who changes the paper
cone twice. When the cone has been changed as often as is required, the
trap is closed and the table can be moved.

When the curtain is removed for the performance of the Sphinx trick,
there is a covered, that is, draped table on the stage, which is never
seen before or afterwards. In front of the middle of it, and between it
and the audience, stands one of those little draped tables covering a
trap; this is a third trap in the centre of the stage. The box for the
head is then upon IT, and the conjuror takes it off and shows it. The
man whose head is afterwards shown in that box is, I conceive, in the
table; that is to say, is lying on his chest in the thickness of the
table, in an extremely constrained attitude. To get