Your ever affectionate
Jo.

[Sidenote: Mr. William Charles Kent.]

GAD'S HILL, _Thursday, Jan. 18th, 1866._

MY DEAR KENT,

I cannot tell you how grieved we all are here to know that you are
suffering again. Your patient tone, however, and the hopefulness and
forbearance of Ferguson's course, gives us some reassurance. Apropos of
which latter reference I dined with Ferguson at the Lord Mayor's, last
Tuesday, and had a grimly distracted impulse upon me to defy the
toast-master and rush into a speech about him and his noble art, when I
sat pining under the imbecility of constitutional and corporational
idiots. I did seize him for a moment by the hair of his head (in
proposing the Lady Mayoress), and derived some faint consolation from
the company's response to the reference. O! no man will ever know under
what provocation to contradiction and a savage yell of repudiation I
suffered at the hands of ----, feebly complacent in the uniform of
Madame Tussaud's own military waxers, and almost the worst speaker I
ever heard in my life! Mary and Georgina, sitting on either side of me,
urged me to "look pleasant." I replied in expressions not to be
repeated. Shea (the judge) was just as good and graceful, as he (the
member) was bad and gawky.

Bulwer's "Lost Tales of Miletus" is a most noble book! He is an
extraordinary fellow, and fills me with admiration and wonder.

It is of no use writing to you about yourself, my dear Kent, because you
are likely to be tired of that constant companion, and so I have gone
scratching (with an exceedingly bad pen) about and about you. But I come
back to you to let you know that the reputation of this house as a
convalescent hospital stands (like the house itself) very high, and that
testimonials can be produced from credible persons who have recovered
health and spirits here swiftly. Try us, only try us, and we are content
to stake the reputation of the establishment on the result.

Ever affectionately yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Percy Fitzgerald.]

GAD'S HILL, _Friday, Feb. 2nd, 1866._

MY DEAR FITZGERALD,

I ought to have written to you days and days ago, to thank you for your
charming book on Charles Lamb, to tell you with what interest and
pleasure I read it as soon as it came