O Wallaston, the delight of this leisure! I read, I write, I play. Good gracious! I shouldn't wonder if my music came to something yet. I have actually gone back to singing, a vice of my youth. Don't mention it at Clifton! I always think the sea the great challenger and promoter of song. Even the mountain is not the same thing. There may always be some d----d fool or another behind a rock. But the sea is open, and you can tell when you are alone, and the dear old chap is so confidential: I will trust him with my secret. How about Devon! was it good? Did you all bathe and "rux" yourselves well about in the brine? I have not done much in that way: the storms have been so furious--unkind of them, eh? Well, I fancy it is like the boisterous welcome of some great dog--at least I take it in that sense. And the old boy is so strong, and he doesn't know, he thinks I am what I used to be. But I'm not: and every now and then he remembers that, and creeps to my feet so fawningly.... [Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_] At a great prayer-meeting requests were being made that divers souls, supposed to be in evil case, should be interceded for. One arose and asked the prayers of the meeting for a little town on the east coast of Scotland, which was "wholly given to idolatry." Such was the expression. A little city, with many schools, also the seat of a University. Having thus mysteriously indicated the place, the excellent individual plainly felt that no mortal could possibly guess what place he meant; and, putting his hand over his mouth, he said to his friends on the platform, in a hoarse whisper distinctly heard over the entire hall, "St. Andrews!" Isn't that consummate? Isn't it Scotland?... [Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_] Walters did an extremely kind thing the other day. Two old things going about with an _entertainment_ (!) of Recitations (really old, for I heard them "at it" thirty-five years ago), took a letter with them from me to Walters. It was the merest chance, I thought, but I suggested that just possibly Walters might give them an evening at the College. By Jove! sir, he did give them an evening, and gave them a substantial fee, and filled their poor trembling cup of Auld lang syne with joy and thanksgiving, and dismissed them with honour, almost reeling with the intoxication of so unwonted a success, the boys giving them a mighty three-times-three which shook the welkin, and stirred amazingly the pulsation of two hearts that have long desisted from the exercise of hope.... [Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_] I heard one or two good stories at Braddan when I preached there (last Sunday). One was of a child at the Sunday-school. "What ought you to do on Sunday?" "Go to church." "What ought you to do next?" "Go to chapel." Was it not precisely the story for a vicar to tell? You feel the atmosphere--what?... [Sidenote: _T.E. Brown_]