Now I know, Tom, this would be unprofessional, but really in times like these, when a capital execution scarcely turns up once a year, it doesn't do for a person to be over nice; besides, if I do extinguish my vital spark for six days, where's the great harm? Not a person sustains the slightest injury; I have no relations to blackguard me afterwards for not dying. I have no heirs to sue the paper for damages; I have no grandmothers to be hurried into an early grave by the intelligence; and I get a week's dinners by dying at a time I was never more puzzled how to live. My table, I can assure you, has not groaned under the luxuries of the season for ever so long. So where is the great sin of leaving this sublunary sphere for seven days, if I cannot keep soul and body together without it? Psha! it's all affectation, and I have a good mind to try an Awful Suicide to-morrow; and, to make it more interesting, call myself "a Gentleman of Fortune." All this scarcity comes of educating people, and the march of intellect, and the rage for improvements! Did you ever hear such nonsense? Why, I suppose civilization will be taking such rapid strides that the wood pavement—(I hope you have got one in your place; the bit of wood in the Strand lit my fires for two winters running: what a field it was for accidents, to be sure! I used to pick up two a day)—will be cut eventually from under our feet, and we shan't have a bit of orange-peel, or a slide even, to stand upon, or as much as a drop of prussic-acid to warm our hearts with before going to bed of a cold night. It's all a mistake; and if I am a victim to it I shall lay my death at the door of civilization, and charge them with it. Why, the cabs are nothing to what they used to be—they wont upset; and I do really believe the omnibus conductors are getting civil, merely to spite us. The lightning conductors, too, are very little better. I haven't been able to drink your health in a drop of electric fluid for many a day. Where it will end none of us can tell. The steamers have done a little for business, it's true, and I expect they will do a great deal more for us; but what, I ask you, is a Cricket amongst so many? Besides, one doesn't get such a good blow-out every day. Education, I see, will be the ruin of us all. I have serious thoughts of turning an informer, and reporting my own cases; or, if it comes to the worst, of going over to Dublin, and stopping there patiently till the row at Conciliation Hall begins. I wish it would take place to-morrow! They are a long time about it for Irishmen; for the winter is coming on, and I must give up all thoughts of coals, unless I get a good Destructive Fire or two. Candles, too, come dear when you cannot find, search where you will, the smallest bit of Seasonable Benevolence to pay for them. There's only Railways left us. Do you know, I drink the health of that dear Eastern Counties every time I am lucky enough to get an Awful Accident out of it. Why, Tom, my boy, I was only thinking this morning, as I was leaning over London Bridge, hoping an ill wind would blow me something good, that I would start a railway, and so make my own Accidents, and write them, for greater accuracy, on the spot. I might contract with the different papers to supply them cheap all the year round. But then I recollected, and a burning tear bedewed my eye, that that line of luck was all over, that the poor stags were fairly run off their legs, and that an end had been put for ever to Capel Court. Twelve months sooner, and the thing might have been done. I only wish I was in Hudson's shoes, that's all. What a deal of money I would make, 'lining—wouldn't I, just!
Well, Tom, I must leave you. The neighborhood has just been thrown into the greatest consternation by an "Enormous Gooseberry." I run to measure it with an India-rubber band, for that stretches the best. I hope it is a crammer; at all events I must make it large enough to serve me for dinner, and leave me something to fill my pipe with afterwards. Good-bye, Tom. I hope Liverpool (you lucky fellow, you had the Fever all last winter; you ought to have made your fortune, too, with the Irish) is better off in Accidents—it is much richer I know in Fires—than London. If not, I will make this agreement with you: you shall have my Inhuman Neglect by the Parish Authorities, if you bequeath me your Awful Death by Starvation. Is that a bargain?
I remain, my dear Tom,
In a state much better conceived than described,
Yours regularly "in a line,"
A. Chance.
The Ether's a failure; not a single explosion worth having. Can't you send me up a Shower of Frogs in your next letter? You shall have an Infamous Hoax by return. I say, the American Sea-serpent has not had a turn lately, or the Oldest Inhabitant, and, entre nous, Lord B—h—m has not been killed once these seven years; I have got his Life all ready. I will toss you for him, if you like. What do you say? Two out of three? or Sudden Death?
Young Flimsy was complaining at the Blue Bottle last night of the pressure of the Times. He said he had a most "Wonderful Appetite" on Thursday, and invited half-a-dozen "liners" to supper on the strength of it, but the Currency deprived him of every penny, notwithstanding he had a Curious Case of Instinct, which he made sure would bring him in half-a-crown.
Address to me at the Illustrated Weekly Murder Sheet Office.