The only walk where I don't meet my duns is down by a canal,--a lonely path, with dwarf willows along it. I almost think I 'd have jumped in yesterday, if it was n't for the bull-frogs,--the noise they made drove me away from the place. Depend upon it, Tom, the Humane Society ought to get the breed for the Serpentine. It's only a most "determined suicide" could venture into their company! The chorus in "Robert le Diable" is a love ditty compared to them! LETTER XXVI. MRS. DODD TO MR. PURCELL, OF THE GRANGE, BRUFF. BADEN-BADEN. Dear Mr. Purcell,--Your letter is now before me, and if I did n't know the mark of your hand before, I 'd scarce believe the sentiments was yours. It well becomes you, one that but _one_ woman would ever accept of, to lecture the likes of me on the way I ought to treat my husband. A stingy old creature that sits croaking over an extra sod of turf on the fire, and counts out the potatoes to the kitchen, is not exactly the kind of authority to dictate laws to the respectable head of a family! I often suspected the nature of the advice you gave K. I., but I did n't think you 'd have the hardihood to come out with it _yourself_, and to _me!_ How much you must have forgotten both of us, it's mighty clear! Where did you get all the elegant expressions about K. I.'s "unavoidably prolonged absence," "the sacrifices exacted from friendship," "the generous ardor of a chivalrous nature," and the other fine balderdash you bestow upon your friend's disgraceful behavior? Do you know what you are talking about? Have you a notion about the affair at all? Answer me that. Are you aware that he is now two months and four days away without as much as a letter, except a bit of an impertinent note, once, to ask are we alive or dead, not a sixpence in cash, not a check, nor even a bill that we might try to get protested, or whatever they call it? I don't make any illusions to why he went, and what he went for. I would n't disgrace my pen with the subject, nor myself by noticing it; but, except yourself, in the brown wig and the black satin small clothes, I don't know one less suited to perform the "Lutherian." You are a nice pair, and I expect nothing less than to hear of yourself next! And you have the impudence to tell me that these are some of the "innocent freedoms of Continental life"! What do you know about them, I 'd beg to ask,--_you_, that never was nearer the Continent than Malahide? As to the innocent freedoms of the Continent, there's nobody can teach me anything; I see them before me in the day when I drive out, at the _table d'hôte_ where I dine, and at every ball where they dance. Sweet innocence it is, indeed! and particularly when practised by the father of a grown-up family,--fifty-seven, he says, in June, but more likely sixty odd, for I know many of his co-trumperies, and nice young gentlemen they are too!