There's an epistle for you! You 'll not find the like of it in the "Polite Letter-Writer," I 'll wager. The father of a family--and such a family too!--discoursing as easily about the height of iniquity as if he was alluding to the state of the weather, or the price of sheep at the last fair. He flatters himself, maybe, that this free-and-easy way is the best to bamboozle me, and that by seeming to make nothing of it, I 'll take the same view as himself. Is that all he knows of me yet? Did he ever succeed in deceiving me during the last seventeen years? Did n't I find him out in twenty things when he did n't know himself of his own depravity? I tell you in confidence, Molly, that if coming abroad is an elegant thing for our sex, it's downright ruin to men of K. I.'s time of life! When they come to fifty, or thereabouts, in Ireland, they settle down to something respectable, either on the Bench, or Guardians to the Union. Their thoughts runs upon green crops and draining, and how to raise a trifle, by way of loan, from the Board of Works. But not having these things, abroad, to engage them, they take to smartening themselves up with polished boots and blackened whiskers, and what between pinching here, and padding there, they get the notion that they 're just what they were thirty years ago! Oh dear! oh dear! sure they 've only to go upstairs a little quick, to stoop to pick up a handkerchief, or button a boot, to detect the mistake, and if that won't do, let them try a polka with a young lady just out for her first season! Of all the old fools, in this fashion, I never met a worse than K. I.! and what adds to the disgrace, he knows it himself, and he goes on saying, "Sure I 'm too old for this," or "I'm past that;" and I always chime in with, "Of course you are; you 'd cut a nice figure;" and so on. But what's the use of it, Molly? Their vanity and conceit sustains them against all the snubs in the world, and till they come down to a Bath-chair, they never believe that they can't dance a hornpipe! I could say a great deal more on this subject, but I must turn to other things. You must see Purcell and tell him the way we 're left, without a fraction of money, nor knowing where to get it Tell him that I wrote to Waters about a separation, which I would, only that K. I.'s affairs is in such a state, I 'd have to put up with a mere trifle. Say that I 'm going to expose him in the newspapers, and there's "no knowing where I 'll stop," for that's exactly the threat Tom Purcell will be frightened at. Get him to send me a remittance immediately, and describe our distress and destitution as touchingly as you can.