hope to do a bit of primrosey ground that will be richer.

* * * * *

Here, not I, but a thing with a dozen of colds in its head, am!

I caught one cold on Wednesday last, another on Thursday, two on
Friday, four on Saturday, and one at every station between this and
Ingleborough on Monday. I never was in such ignoble misery of cold.
I've no cough to speak of, nor anything worse than usual in the way of
sneezing, but my hands are cold, my pulse nowhere, my nose tickles
and wrings me, my ears sing--like kettles, my mouth has no taste, my
heart no hope of ever being good for anything, any more. I never
passed such a wretched morning by my own fireside in all my days, and
I've quite a fiendish pleasure in telling you all this, and thinking
how miserable you'll be too. Oh me, if I ever get to feel like myself
again, won't I take care of myself.

* * * * *

The feathers nearly made me fly away from all my Psalters and
Exoduses, to you, and my dear Peacocks. I wonder when Solomon got his
ivory and apes and peacocks, whether he ever had time to look at them.
He couldn't always be ordering children to be chopped in two. Alas, I
suppose his wisdom, in England of to-day, would have been taxed to
find out which mother lied in saying which child _wasn't_ hers!

I've been writing to Miss R. again, and Miss L.'s quite right to stay
at home. "She thinks I have an eagle's eye." Well, what else should I
have, in day time? together with my cat's eye in the dark? But you may
tell her I should be very sorry if my eyes were _no_ better than
eagles'! "Doth the eagle know what is in the pit"?[46] _I_ do.

[Footnote 46: Blake.]

* * * * *

I hope you will be comforted in any feeling of languor or depression
in yourself by hearing that I also am wholly lack lustrous,
_de_pressed, _op_pressed, _com_pressed, and _down_pressed
by a quite countless pressgang of despondencies, humilities, remorses,
shamefacednesses, all overnesses, all undernesses, sicknesses,
dullnesses, darknesses, sulkinesses, and everything that rhymes to
lessness and distress, and that I'm sure you and I are at present the
mere targets of the darts of the ----, etc., etc., and Mattie's
waiting and mustn't be loaded with more sorrow; but I can't tell you
how sorry I am to break my promise to-day, but it would not be safe
for me to come.

* * * * *