So much for request second. As to request first, I will do what I can. But I am a bad beggar, and people are not very easily persuaded (far from it); 6d. in the pound property tax, poor rates, champagne, lighting, anything will do to stop the mouth of a petitioner. I doubt not in the range of your philanthropical experience you have met with many a cold shoulder. I believe you might disperse a mob more effectually by the exhibition of a subscription list than by reading the Riot Act. It is very useful in clearing your room of officious visitors. Produce a list for the conversion of somebody to some thing which he was not before (to wit, the Pope to a coadjutor of Dr. Cumming or Lord John Russell to an honest statesman), and, presto! the whole scene changes. "Well, Watson," says one, "I must be off, I have several calls to make." "Bless me," says another, taking out his watch, "it's getting on to half-past five (the clock has just struck three) and it's my week to read in Chapel." Helter-skelter away they go, like Leonora pursued by the ghosts. Der Mond scheint hell, Hurrah! die Todten reiten schnell. Well, Bessie, you have called up old times. Merry days they were, and have left no sting. I sometimes see Mary. I go occasionally to Didcot, where there are nice children; but Milton Hill is just a mile and a half too far off. I can't walk as I could in those days when we used to saunter through the scented glades of the happy valley, or penetrate the mysterious horrors of Bagley. The last fragment of those excursions was with Fanny and Henrietta to Headington and round by Marston (as intended), but time was getting on, and your good uncle would be waiting for his dinner. So in an evil hour we made a short cut across the fields and verified the proverb,--Hedges without a gap; ditches without a plank; gates guarded with _chevaux de frise_ of prickly thorns. It was then that Henrietta, madly pushing at an impracticable passage, uttered that famous parody: I'll brave the scratching of the thorn, But not a hungry uncle. But I am spinning out a double-thrummed homily, and you have better things to attend to. My love to you all. Believe me, my dear Bessie, _vuestros hasta la muerte_, J. WATSON. Bessie had sent as a Christmas present to Dr. Kynaston a silk watch-chain of her own make, a favourite gift of hers to dear friends. In his reply the doctor proposes to make an appeal to the public on behalf of the blind. He writes: ST. PAUL'S, _26th December 1856_.