I hope you will like this for all its carelessness. I must take an opportunity here to observe that though I am writing _to_ you, I am all the while writing _at_ your wife. This explanation will account for my speaking sometimes hoity-toity-ishly, whereas if you were alone, I should sport a little more sober sadness. I am like a squinty gentleman, who, saying soft things to one lady ogles another, or what is as bad, in arguing with a person on his left hand, appeals with his eyes to one on the right. His vision is elastic; he bends it to a certain object, but having a patent spring it flies off. Writing has this disadvantage of speaking--one cannot write a wink, or a nod, or a grin, or a purse of the lips, or a _smile--O law!_ One cannot put one's finger to one's nose, or yerk ye in the ribs, or lay hold of your button in writing; but in all the most lively and titterly parts of my letter you must not fail to imagine me, as the epic poets say, now here, now there; now with one foot pointed at the ceiling, now with another; now with my pen on my ear, now with my elbow in my mouth. O, my friends, you lose the action, and attitude is everything, as Fuseli said when he took up his leg like a musket to shoot a swallow just darting behind his shoulder. And yet does not the word "mum" go for one's finger beside the nose? I hope it does. I have to make use of the word "mum" before I tell you that Severn has got a little baby--all his own, let us hope. He told Brown he had given up painting, and had turned modeller. I hope sincerely 'tis not a party concern--that no Mr. ---- or ---- is the real Pinxit and Severn the poor Sculpsit to this work of art. You know he has long studied in the life Academy. "Haydon--yes," your wife will say, "Here is a sum total account of Haydon again. I wonder your brother don't put a monthly bulletin in the Philadelphia papers about him. I won't hear--no. Skip down to the bottom, and there are some more of his verses--skip (lullaby-by) them too."--"No, let's go regularly through."--"I won't hear a word about Haydon--bless the child, how rioty she is--there, go on there."