APRIL THE EIGHTH.--Blank; no entries. * * * * * APRIL THE NINTH.--Also blank. * * * * * APRIL THE TENTH.--It is illness and not a disinclination to pursue my self-appointed task of preserving this repository of my thoughts and deeds which for the past two days has kept me from you, friend diary. As a consequence of venturing abroad upon the seventh instant without my heavy undergarments and likewise without galoshes, having been deceived into committing these indiscretions by a false and treacherous mildness of atmospheric conditions leading to the assumption that the vernal season had come or was impending--a circumstance already described some paragraphs back--I found myself upon the morn following to be the victim of a severe cold, complicated with quinsy or sore throat. I have ever since been confined to my room, if not to my couch, in an acutely indisposed state, endeavouring to rid myself of these impairments by recourse to a great variety of panaceas applied both internally and otherwise. Not until the present moment have I felt qualified, either mentally or bodily, to address myself to the labour of literary composition. Indeed, what with trying this vaunted cure or that--now a gargle, now a foot bath in water heated well nigh to boiling, now a hot lemonade, and again a bolus, a lotion or a liniment--I have had no time for writing, even if so inclined. I am struck by the interesting fact that when one is ill of a cold practically every one with whom one comes in contact has a favourite suggestion for relieving one of one's symptoms. Scarce a member of the faculty these two days but has prescribed this or that thing, each in turn extolling the virtues of her own remedy and at the same time vigorously decrying the merits of all others whatsoever. To avoid showing favouritism and to guard against giving offence in any quarter, for such is my nature, I have faithfully endeavoured to accept the advice and obey the injunction of each and every well wisher, with one exception. I shall refer to that exception in another moment. To-night I am greatly improved, although weakened. In fact, I should almost entirely be my former self were it not for a blistered condition of the throat, a pronounced tenderness of the feet, and an inflamed area of the cutaneous covering of the bosom--the first due, I think, to swallowing an overhot lemonade, the second to the constancy with which I resorted to foot bathing, while the third indubitably may be ascribed to the after effects of an oil of great potency and pronounced odour which Miss Waddleton with her own hands bestowed upon me and with which I anointed that particular portion of my anatomy at half-hourly intervals.