HAM GATE, May 2d.
MY DEAREST H----,

I received your kind letter the other night (that is, morning) on
my return from a ball, and read your reflections on dissipation
with an attention heightened by the appropriate comment of a bad
headache and abject weariness from top to toe with dancing. The way
in which people _prosecute_ their pleasures in this good town of
London is certainly amazing; and we are (perforce) models of
moderation, compared with most of our acquaintance. I met at that
very ball persons who had been to one and two parties previously,
and were leaving that dance to hurry to another. Independently of
the great fatigue of such a life, it seems to me so strange that
when people are enjoying themselves to their hearts' content in one
place, they cannot be satisfied to remain there until they wish to
return home, but spend half the night in the streets, running from
one house to another, working their horses to death, and wasting
the precious time when they might be DANCING. You see my folly is
not so great but that I have philosophy to spare for my neighbors.
Let me tell you again, dear H----, how truly I rejoice in your
niece's restored health. The spring, too, is the very time for such
a resurrection, when every day and every hour, every cloud and
every flower, offer inexhaustible matter for the capabilities of
delight thus regained. Indeed, "the drops on the trees are the most
beautiful of all!" [E---- T----'s exclamation during one of her
first drives after the long imprisonment of her nervous malady.] A
wonderful feeling of renewed hope seems to fill the heart of all
created things in the spring, and even here in this smoky town it
finds its way to us, inclosed as we are by brick walls, dusty
streets, and all things unlovely and unnatural! I stood yesterday
in the little court behind our house, where two unhappy poplars and
a sycamore tree were shaking their leaves as if in surprise at the
acquisition and to make sure they had them, and looked up to the
small bit of blue sky above them with pleasurable spring tears in
my eyes. How I wish I were rich and could afford to be out of town
now! I always dislike London, and this lovely weather gives me a
sort of _mal du pays_ for the country. My dearest H----, you must
not dream of