"DEAR OLD MAN,--I have so much writing at that confounded shop--don't grin, now: I can see your cynical old under-lip shooting out at the statement--that I thought I'd give my pen a holiday as well as myself; and indeed I should not favour you with a sight of that 'bowld fist' which so disgusts that old beast Branwhite--saw his name in the _Post_ as having been present at the Inverness gathering, hanging on to swells as usual--if there had not been absolute occasion. "By Jove? what a tremendously long sentence that is! Rather broken-backed and weak in the knees too, eh? Don't seem to hang well together? Rather a 'solution of continuity,' as they call it, isn't there? Never mind, you'll understand what I mean. You see, my dear old George, I don't know whether it is because I'm bored by being in the country--and a fellow who is accustomed to town life must necessarily hate everything else, and find it all horribly slow and dreary--but the fact is, that instead of my leave doing me good, and setting me up, and all that kind of thing, I find myself utterly depressed and wretched, and nothing like half so well or so jolly as when I came down here. "I thought I should go out boating and swimming and riding, and generally larking; and instead of that I find myself sitting grizzling over my pipe, and wondering what on earth I'm to do until evening, and how I shall get through the time after dark until I can go to bed. "You would go blazing away at your old books, or your writing, or your music; but I'm not in that line, old boy. I haven't got what people call 'resources'--in any way, by Jove! tin, or anything else. I want to be amused, and I don't get it here, and that's all about it.