“Affectionate duty to my father, and love to all the happy people at home. “Dear mother, “Your affectionate son, “G. PERCY.” CHAPTER XXIII. LETTER FROM ALFRED TO CAROLINE. “MY DEAR CAROLINE, “I am going to surprise you--I know it is the most imprudent thing a story-teller can do to give notice or promise of a surprise; but you see, I have such confidence at this moment in my fact, that I hazard this imprudence--Whom do you think I have seen? Guess--guess all round the breakfast-table--father, mother, Caroline, Rosamond--I defy you all--ay, Rosamond, even you, with all your capacity for romance; the romance of real life is beyond all other romances--its coincidences beyond the combinations of the most inventive fancy--even of yours, Rosamond--Granted--go on--Patience, ladies, if you please, and don’t turn over the page, or glance to the end of my letter to satisfy your curiosity, but read fairly on, says my father. “You remember, I hope, the Irishman, O’Brien, to whom Erasmus was so good, and whom Mr. Gresham, kind as he always is, took for his porter: when Mr. Gresham set off last week for Amsterdam, he gave this fellow leave to go home to his wife, who lives at Greenwich. This morning, the wife came to see my honour to speak to me, and when she did see me she could not speak, she was crying so bitterly; she was in the greatest distress about her husband: he had, she said, in going to see her, been seized by a press-gang, and put on board a tender now on the Thames. Moved by the poor Irishwoman’s agony of grief, and helpless state, I went to Greenwich, where the tender was lying, to speak to the captain, to try to obtain O’Brien’s release. But upon my arrival there, I found that the woman had been mistaken in every point of her story. In short, her husband was not on board the tender, had never been pressed, and had only stayed away from home the preceding night, in consequence of having met with the captain’s servant, one of his countrymen, from the county of Leitrim dear, who had taken him home to treat him, and had kept him all night to sing ‘St. Patrick’s day in the morning,’ and to drink a good journey, and a quick passage, across the salt water to his master, which he could not refuse. Whilst I was looking at my watch, and regretting my lost morning, a gentleman, whose servant had really been pressed, came up to speak to the captain, who was standing beside me. The gentleman had something striking and noble in his whole appearance; but his address and accent, which were those of a foreigner, did not suit the fancy of my English captain, who, putting on the surly air, with which he thought it for his honour and for the honour of his country to receive a Frenchman, as he took this gentleman to be, replied in the least satisfactory manner possible, and in the short language of some seamen, ‘Your footman’s an Englishman, sir; has been pressed for an able-bodied seaman, which I trust he’ll prove; he’s aboard the tender,