I want you to choose a Lot of my Things to be bequeathed you: Books, Pictures, Furniture. You mustn't think I prematurely deck myself in Sables for my own Funeral; but it happens that I sent the rough Draft of a Will to my Lawyer only three days ago. My Brother John so much wants a Copy of Elizabeth's Verses to my Sister Isabella in other Days. This time twenty years you were going to me at Boulge Cottage: this time ten years you were preparing for India. Adieu, Love to the Lady. Ever yours, E. F. G. _To W. H. Thompson_. LOWESTOFT: _July_ 27 [1866]. MY DEAR THOMPSON, Your welcome Letter was forwarded to me here To day. I feel sure that the Lady I once saw at the Deanery is all you say; and you believe of me, as I believe of myself, that I don't deal in Compliment, unless under very strong Compulsion. I suppose, as Master of Trinity you could not do otherwise than marry, and so keep due State and Hospitality there: and I do think you could not have found one fitter to share, and do, the honours. And if (as I also suppose) there is Love, or Liking, or strong Sympathy, or what not? why, all looks well. Be it so! I had not heard of Spedding's entering into genteel House-keeping till your Letter told me of it. I suppose he will be a willing Victim to his Kinsfolk. A clerical Brother in law of mine has lost his own whole Fortune in four of these Companies which have gone to smash. Nor his own only. For, having, when he married my Sister, insisted on having half her Income tied to him by Settlement, _that_ half lies under Peril from the 'Calls' made upon him as Shareholder. At Genus Humanum damnat Caligo Futuri. So I, trusting in my Builder's Honesty, have a Bill sent in about one third bigger than it should be. All which rather amuses me, on the whole, though I spit out a Word now and then: and indeed am getting a Surveyor to overhaul the Builder: a hopeless Process, I believe all the while. Meanwhile, I go about in my little Ship, where I do think I have two honest Fellows to deal with. We have just been boarding a Woodbridge Vessel that we met in these Roads, and drinking a Bottle of Blackstrap round with the Crew. With me just at present is my Brother Peter, for whose Wife (a capital Irishwoman, of the Mrs. O'Dowd Type) my Paper is edged with Black. No one could be a better Husband than he; no one more attentive and anxious during her last Illness, more than a year long; and, now all is over, I never saw him in better Health or Spirits. Men are not inconsolable for elderly Wives; as Sir Walter Scott, who was not given to caustic Aphorisms, observed long ago.