For both our sakes I 'll not recall the state of mind in which this scene left me. As to going an excursion with such a sum, or rather with what would have remained of it after paying waiters, porters, and such-like, it was too absurd to think of, so that I coolly put it in my pocket, walked over to "the Rooms," threw it on the green cloth of the gaming-table--and--lost it! There ends the episode of my last fortnight's existence,--as dreary and disreputable a one as need be. As to how I have passed the last four days I 'm not quite so clear! I have walked some twenty-five or thirty miles in each, dining at little wayside inns, and returning late at night to Baden. Passing through picturesque glens, and along mountain ridges of boldest outline, I have marked little. I remember still less. Still the play-fever is abating. I can sleep without dreaming of the croupier's chant, and I awake without starting at any imaginary loss! I feel as though great bodily exertion and fatigue would ultimately antagonize the excessive tension of nerves too long and too painfully on the stretch, and I am steadily pursuing this system for a cure. When I come home--after midnight--I add some pages to this long epistle, which I sometimes doubt if I shall ever have courage to send you! for there is this poignant misery about one's play misfortunes, you never can expect a friend's sympathy, no matter how severe your sufferings be. The losses at play are thoroughly selfish ills; they appeal to nothing for consolation! You will have remarked how I have avoided all mention of the family in this epistle. The truth is, I scarcely ever see my mother or Mary Anne. Caroline occasionally comes to me before I 'm up of a morning; but it is to sorrow over domestic griefs of one kind or other. My father is still away, and, strangely too, we do not hear from him; and, in fact, we are a most ill-ordered, broken-up household, each going his own road, and that being--in almost every case, I fear--a bad one. This recital--if it be ever destined to come to hand--may possibly tend to reconcile you to home life, and the want of those advantages which you are so thoroughly convinced pertain to foreign travel. I know that in my present mood I am very far from being an impartial witness, and I am also aware that I am open to the reproach of not having cultivated those arts which give to Continental residence its peculiar value; but let me tell you, Bob, the ignorance with which I left home--the utter neglect of education in youth--left me unable to derive profit from what lay so seemingly accessible. You do not plate over cast-iron, and the thin lacquer of gold or silver would never even hide the base metal beneath. I haven't courage to go over and see Morris; and here I live, perfectly isolated and companionless.