DEAR BRYANT, THE BOUNTIFUL,--You are something like grapes yourself. By the bye, it 's no matter what you call me; "my dear Doctor" is well enough, if you can't do better; only "my dear Sir" I do hate, between good old friends such as we are, as much as Walter Scott did. But, as I was saying, you are like grapes yourself,--fair, round, self-contained, hanging gracefully upon the life-vine, still full of sap; shining under the covert of leaves, but more clearly seen, now that the frosts of age are descending, and causing them to fall away; while I am more like--but I have so poor an opinion of myself, that I won't tell you what. This is no affected self-depreciation. I can't learn to be old, but am as full of passion, impatience, foolishness, blind reachings after wisdom, as ever. Instance: I am angry with the expressman because he did not bring the grapes to-day; angry with the telegraph because it did not bring a despatch to tell how a sick boy was, under nine hours. . . . Here I am, Thursday morning, on a second sheet, waiting for the grapes. What else, in the mean time, shall I entertain you with? The flood! It has been prodigious, the highest known for many years; water, water all around, from beside the road here to the opposite hill. It is curious to see men running like rats from the deluge, up to their knees in water, on returning from a common walk (fact, happened to the S--s), trying to drive home one way and could n't,--going round to a bridge and finding that swept away,--dams torn down and mills toppled over, and half the "sure and firm-set earth" turned into water-courses and flood-trash. . . . [310] The afternoon train has arrived, and no grapes. Very angry. The faithless express, you see, is a great plague to you as well as me; for not only does it not bring me the grapes, but is the cause of your having this long dawdling letter. Why don't you show up its iniquities? What is a "Post" made and set up for, if not, among other things, to bear affiches testifying to the people of their wickedness? The express is the most slovenly agent and the most irresponsible tyrant in the country. What it brings is perhaps ruined by delay,--plants, for instance. No help. "Pay," it says to the station-master, "or we don't leave it." Oh, if I had the gift and grace to send articles to the "Post," from time to time, upon abuses! Friday. No grapes. More angry. Saturday. No grapes. I 'm furious. This last was the record of the afternoon; but in the evening, at half-past nine, they were sent down from the station,--and in remarkably good order, considering, and in quantity quite astonishing. The basket seemed like the conjurer's hat, out of which comes a half-bushel of flowers, oranges; and what not. We are all very much obliged to you; and, judging from the appearance of the six heaped-up plates, I am sure, when we come to eat them, that every tooth will testify, if it does not speak. To the Same. ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 28, 1870.