MY DEAR FRIEND,--Dr. Jackson is fast turning me into a vegetable,-homo multi-cotyledonous is the species. My head is a cabbage--brain, cauliflower; my eyes are two beans, with a short cucumber between them, for a nose; my heart is a squash (very soft); my lungs--cut a watermelon in two, lengthwise, and you have them; [249]my legs are cornstalks, and my feet, potatoes. I eat nothing but these things, and I am fast becoming nothing else. I am potatoes and corn and cucumber and cabbage,--like the chameleon, that takes the color of the thing it lives on. Dr. Jackson will have a great deal to answer for to the world. Had n't you better come into town and see about it? Perhaps you can arrest the process. . . . I declare I think it is too bad to send such a poor dish to you as this, and especially in your loneliness; but it is all. Dr. Jackson's fault. Think of mosquito-bars in Boston! They must be very trying things--to the mosquitoes. You see they don't know what to make of it; and very likely their legs and wings get caught sometimes in the "decussated, reticulated interstices," as Dr. Johnson calls them. At any rate, from their noise, they evidently consider themselves as the most ill-treated and unfortunate outcasts upon earth. Paganini wrote the "Carnival of Venice." I wonder somebody does n't write the no-carnival of the mosquitoes. To the Same. BOSTON, Dec. 30, 1858. DEAR MY FRIEND,--I cannot let the season of happy wishes pass by without sending mine to you and yours. But you must begin to gather up patience for your venerable friend, for the happy anniversaries somehow begin to gather shadows around them; they are both reminders and admonishers. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the "Happy New Year!" is never sounded out in the minor key; always it has a ring of joyousness and hope in it. Read that [250] little piece of Fanny Kemble's,{22} on the 179th page,--the "Answer to a Question." I send you the volume 1 by this mail. Ah! what a clear sense and touching sensibility and bracing moral tone there is, running through the whole volume! But I was going to say that that little piece tells you what I would write better than I can write it. We all send "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" to you all, in a heap; that is, a heap of us to a heap of you, and a heap of good wishes. {FN 22: Mrs. Kemble's Poems} My poor head is rather improving, but it is n't worth much yet, as you plainly see. Nevertheless, in the other and sound part of me I am, As ever, your friend, ORVILLE DEWEY. To his Sister, Miss F. Dewey. [Date missing. About 1859.]