ke a point of going to the Athenaeum on Monday night; and if I
had five hundred votes to give, Mr. Macdonald should have them all, for
your sake.

I grieve to hear that you have been ill, but I hope that the spring,
when it comes, will find you blooming with the rest of the flowers.

Very faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. Edmund Yates.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Wednesday, April 28th, 1858._

MY DEAR YATES,

For a good many years I have suffered a great deal from charities, but
never anything like what I suffer now. The amount of correspondence they
inflict upon me is really incredible. But this is nothing. Benevolent
men get behind the piers of the gates, lying in wait for my going out;
and when I peep shrinkingly from my study-windows, I see their
pot-bellied shadows projected on the gravel. Benevolent bullies drive up
in hansom cabs (with engraved portraits of their benevolent institutions
hanging over the aprons, like banners on their outward walls), and stay
long at the door. Benevolent area-sneaks get lost in the kitchens and
are found to impede the circulation of the knife-cleaning machine. My
man has been heard to say (at The Burton Arms) "that if it was a
wicious place, well and good--_that_ an't door work; but that wen all
the Christian wirtues is always a-shoulderin' and a-helberin' on you in
the 'all, a-tryin' to git past you and cut upstairs into master's room,
why no wages as you couldn't name wouldn't make it up to you."

Persecuted ever.

[Sidenote: Mrs Yates.]

(THE CHARMING ACTRESS, THE MOTHER OF MR. EDMUND YATES.)

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, W.C.,
_Saturday Evening, May 15th, 1858._

MY DEAR MRS. YATES,

Pray believe that I was sorry with all my heart to miss you last
Thursday, and to learn the occasion of your absence; also that, whenever
you can come, your presence will give me a new interest in that evening.
No one alive can have more delightful associations with the lightest
sound of your voice than I have; and to give you a minute's interest and
pleasure, in acknowledgment of the uncountable hours of happiness you
gave me when you were a mysterious angel to me, would honestly gratify
my heart.

Very