as thinking myself
visible to some one.... In the evening, at the theater, the house
was very good; the play was "The Gamester," and I played very ill.
I felt fagged to death; my work tires me, and I am growing old.

_Saturday, 20th._--At Bannisters all the morning. Emily gave me two
charming Italian songlets, and then they drove us down to
Southampton. At the theater this evening the house was all but
empty, owing to some stupid blunder in the advertisement. The play
was "The School for Scandal," and I played well.... To-morrow I
shall be at home once more in smoky London.

SOUTHAMPTON, August 19, 1831.
MY DEAREST H----,

I do not like to defer answering you any longer, though I am not
very fit to write, for I am half blind with crying, and have a
torturing side-ache, the results of bodily fatigue and nervous
anxiety; but if I do not write to you to-night I know not when I
shall be able to do so, for I shall have to rehearse every morning
and to act every night, and I expect the intermediate hours will be
spent on the road to and from Bannisters, the Fitzhughs' place near
here. I have been traveling ever since half-past eight to-day, and,
have hardly been three hours out of the coach which brought us from
Weymouth, where we have been acting for the last week. Your letter
followed me from Plymouth, and right glad I was to get it.... I do
not know what I can write you of if not myself, and I dare say,
after all, my thoughts are more amusing to you, or rather, perhaps,
more useful, in your processes of observing and studying human
nature in general, through my individual case, than if I wrote you
word what plays we had been acting, etc., etc.... To meet pain, no
matter how severe, the mind girds up its loins, and finds a sort of
strength of resistance in its endurance, which is a species of
activity. To endure helplessly prolonged suspense is another matter
quite, and a far heavier demand upon all patient power than is in
one....

So you have seen the railroad; I am so glad you have seen that
magnificent invention. I wish I had been on it with you. I wish you
had seen Stephenson; you would have delighted in him, I am sure.
The hope of meeting him again is one of the greatest pleasures
Liverpool hold