“My dear Aunt,—I have often longed to turn my pen to the paper, but no one, only the Almighty, knows how hurried, and bustled, and bothered I am, getting myself up to understand every thing, _or to make believe to do so_, which comes to much the same thing for a while anyhow, which I daresay you don’t understand, and so best for you, Aunt dear! “I’m with the lady still, and likely to remain, for she’s both kind and helpless, and is well enough to do without a nurse, (she says,) though if I’m not _that_ no one ever was. She’s not fractious, poor dear! only humorsome, and does not care to stay long in one place—restless-like; I have my trials with her too in many little ways—I didn’t want her to know I could read, because she might ask me to read prayers and things contrary to my religion, but unfortunately, I said I could write, and that let her _into it_—she was ’cute enough to know that I must read _first_. “We were a while in a place, they call it by the name of Bath; it’s a mighty unnatural city, where the _could_ water comes up out of the earth in a continued boil, and you wouldn’t see a carriage with a pair of horses in a week’s walk, for it’s the men are horses there and draw the sick creatures, that bathe in, and then drink, the hot water, up and down the hills, and you’d think it a holy place, for every second gentleman you meet is a priest or a minister; yes, indeed, they must be a mighty delicate set of gentlemen in England, for there’s a power of them in Bath. My mistress never meddles with my religion, only folds her spectacles in the Bible and leaves it in my way—but I take no notice. I can hardly expect you to believe me, but the water comes as I tell you _hot_ out of the earth; there must be a fire under it _somewhere_; but who can tell _where_ that fire is, or _who_ looks after it? The inhabitants, I’m sure, live in greater terror of an explosion than they _let on_ to the poor innocents that do be looking after their health; and maybe that’s the reason they fill up the town with the Clargy to keep all quiet; sure it’s them we send for ourselves when any thing unnatural is going on; if you mind[10] when the underground noises were heard in Castle Croft, they sent for his Reverence Father Joyce at once, and kept him ever so long about the place, and no one heard a stir of noise since! so maybe, the holy men are useful that way in Bath, to keep down the spirits of the waters in their right place.