[Sidenote: 1833. _Retrospection._] TO THE SAME. _Sept. 6, 1833._ MY DEAR NIECE,— Eight days are already gone since the arrival of your dear letter of August 21st, and I can hardly muster up composure enough at this moment to reply to it, because my ideas are still, what they ever have been, more occupied with future or past events than what passes immediately about me. At present my thoughts are wholly fixed on the busy scenes with which you are at present surrounded, and regretting that I am not with you to afford you any assistance, or to take charge of my nephew’s workshops, as I used to do of his father’s when absent; or that it is not possible to shake off some thirty years from my shoulders that I might accompany you on your voyage. In answer to your query about my nephew’s building a grotto of coals I must plead ignorance, but have no doubt many an edifice of that kind has daily been erected and erased without my being present, for my dear nephew was only in his sixth year when I came to be detached from the family circle. But this did not hinder _John_ and _I_ from remaining the most affectionate friends, and many a half or whole holiday he was allowed to spend with me, was dedicated to making experiments in chemistry, where generally all boxes, tops of tea-canisters, pepper-boxes, teacups, &c., served for the necessary vessels, and the sand-tub furnished the matter to be analysed. I only had to take care to exclude water, which would have produced havoc on my carpet. And for his first notion of building I believe he is indebted to me, for it was on his second or third birthday when I lifted him in the trenches to lay the south corner-stone of the building which was added to the original house at Slough. It must have been the second year of his age, for I remember I was obliged to use a deal of coaxing to make him part with the money he was to lay on the brick. About the same time, when one day I was sitting beside him, listening to his prattle, my attention was drawn by his hammering to see what he might be about, and found that it was the continuation of many days’ labour, and that the ground about the corner of the house was undermined, the corner-stone entirely away, and he was hard at work going on with the next. I gave the alarm, and old John Wiltshire, a favourite carpenter, came running, crying out, “God bless the boy, if he is not going to pull the house down!” (Our John was this man’s pet, he taught him to handle the tools). A bricklayer came directly with brick and mortar to mend the damage.