I am, my dear friend, faithfully yours,
W. C.
TO LADY HESKETH.
The Lodge, Dec. 10, 1787.
I thank you for the snip of cloth, commonly called a pattern. At present I have two coats, and but one back. If at any time, hereafter, I should find myself possessed of fewer coats, or more backs, it will be of use to me.
Though I have thought proper never to take any notice of the arrival of my MSS. together with the other good things in the box, yet certain it is that I received them. I have furbished up the tenth book till it is as bright as silver, and am now occupied in bestowing the same labour upon the eleventh. The twelfth and thirteenth are in the hands of ——, and the fourteenth and fifteenth are ready to succeed them. This notable job is the delight of my heart, and how sorry shall I be when it is ended!
The smith and the carpenter, my dear, are both in the room hanging a bell; if I therefore make a thousand blunders let the said intruders answer for them all.
I thank you, my dear, for your history of the G——s. What changes in that family! And how many thousand families have in the same time experienced changes as violent as theirs! The course of a rapid river is the justest of all emblems to express the variableness of our scene below. Shakspeare says, none ever bathed himself twice in the same stream, and it is equally true that the world upon which we close our eyes at night is never the same with that on which we open them in the morning.
I do not always say, give my love to my uncle,[386] because he knows that I always love him. I do not always present Mrs. Unwin's love to you, partly for the same reason, (deuce take the smith and the carpenter,) and partly because I forget it. But to present my own, I forget never, for I always have to finish my letter, which I know not how to do, my dearest Coz, without telling you, that I am
Ever yours,
W. C.