I have not heard again from Bath, and have seen nobody but Fanny Wilson, with whom I dine to-morrow, and Mrs. Mitchell's two boys....
I shall get through my packing very well. Hayes is greatly improved, and really begins now to be useful to me. Thus we most of us begin only just as we come to the end and leave off.
I was driving about all yesterday, doing commissions; to-day the sun shines, and I am going to wade in the mud for my health.
God bless you. Kiss dear Dorothy for me.
Ever yours,
Fanny.
Norwich, Wednesday, January 20th.
I have found your cutler, Kingsbury; and very glad I was to find him, for I hate not being able to execute a commission exactly as I am desired to do....
When I said that people never love others better than themselves, I did not mean more, but in a better way than they love themselves. I mean that those who are conscientious in their self-regard will be conscientious in their regard for others, and that it takes good people to make good friends; and I do not consider this a "paradox of mine," as you uncivilly style it. It is a conviction of mine, and I feel sure that you agree with it, whatever your first impression of my meaning may have been when I said that people never loved others better than themselves (i.e., with a better kind of love). I know that very unprincipled people are capable of affection, and their affection partakes of their want of principle: people have committed crimes for the sake of the love they bore their wives, mistresses (oftener), and children; and half the meannesses, pettinesses, and selfishnesses of which society is full, have their source in unprincipled affection as much as in unprincipled self-love.
I had already taken to my King Street lodging when I left it for this place. You know I have a horror of new places and a facility in getting over it, which is a double disadvantage in this wandering life of mine; for I am perpetually undergoing the process of feeling miserable and lonely in a new place, and more miserable and lonely still when I leave it. The room I have here is gloomy, but opens into my bedroom, which is comfortable, and I shall soon attain the easy liking of habit for it.