r proper service from them on the one
hand, and treating them with all possible consistency, gentleness, and
consideration on the other, we know that we do right. Their doing wrong
cannot change our doing right, and that should be enough for us.

So I have given _my_ feathers a shake, and am all right again. Give
_your_ feathers a shake, and take a cheery flutter into the air of
Hertfordshire.

Great reports from Dolby and also from Fields! But I keep myself quite
calm, and hold my decision in abeyance until I shall have book, chapter,
and verse before me. Dolby hoped he could leave Uncle Sam on the 11th of
this month.

Sydney has passed as a lieutenant, and appeared at home yesterday, all
of a sudden, with the consequent golden garniture on his sleeve, which
I, God forgive me, stared at without the least idea that it meant
promotion.

I am glad you see a certain unlikeness to anything in the American
story. Upon myself it has made the strangest impression of reality and
originality!! And I feel as if I had read something (by somebody else),
which I should never get out of my mind!!! The main idea of the
narrator's position towards the other people was the idea that I _had_
for my next novel in A. Y. R. But it is very curious that I did not in
the least see how to begin his state of mind until I walked into Hoghton
Towers one bright April day with Dolby.

Faithfully ever.

[Sidenote: Mr. F. D. Finlay.]

CONTRADICTING A NEWSPAPER REPORT OF HIS BEING IN A
CRITICAL STATE OF HEALTH.

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Tuesday, Sept. 3rd, 1867._

This is to certify that the undersigned victim of a periodical
paragraph-disease, which usually breaks out once in every seven years
(proceeding to England by the overland route to India and per Cunard
line to America, where it strikes the base of the Rocky Mountains, and,
rebounding to Europe, perishes on the steppes of Russia), is _not_ in a
"critical state of health," and has _not_ consulted "eminent surgeons,"
and never was better in his life, and is _not_ recommended to proceed to
the United States for "cessation from literary labour," and has not had
so much as a headache for twenty years.

CHARLES DICKENS.

[Sidenote: M. Charles Fechter.]