Dear Tom,--Yours did not reach me till yesterday, owing to some confusion at the Post-office. There is another Dodd here, who has been receiving _my_ letters, and I _his_, for the last week; and I conclude that each of us has learned more than was quite necessary of the other's affairs; for while _he_ was reading of all the moneyed distresses and embarrassments of your humble servant, _I_ opened a letter dated Doctors' Commons, beginning, "Dear sir, we have at last obtained the most satisfactory proofs against Mrs. Dodd, and have no hesitation in now submitting the case to a jury." We met yesterday, and exchanged credentials, with an expression of face that I'm sure "Phiz" would have given a five-pound note to look at. Peachem and Lockit were nothing to it. We agreed that either of us ought to leave this, to prevent similar mistakes in future, although, in my heart, I believe that we now know so much of each other's affairs, that we might depute one of us to conduct both correspondences. In consequence, we tossed up who was to go. _He_ won; so that we take our departure on Wednesday next, if I can settle matters in the mean while. I 'm told Bonn, on the Rhine, is a cheap place, and good for education,--a great matter as regards James,--so that you may direct your next to me there. To tell you the truth, Tom, I'm scarcely sorry to get away, although the process will be anything but a cheap one. First of all, we have taken the rooms for three months, and hired a job-coach for the same time. Moving is also an expensive business, and not over-agreeable at this season; but against these there is the setoff that Mrs. D. and the girls are going to the devil in expense for dress. From breakfast-time till three or four o'clock every day, the house is like a fair with milliners, male and female, hairdressers, perfumers, shoemakers, and trinket-men. I thought we'd done with all this when we left London; but it seems that everything we bought there is perfectly useless, and Mrs. D. comes sailing in every now and then, to make me laugh, as she says, at a bit of English taste by showing me where her waist is too short, or her sleeves too long; and Mary Anne comes down to breakfast in a great stiff watered silk, which for economy she has converted into a house-dress. Caroline, I must say, has not followed the lead, and is quite satisfied to be dressed as she used to be. James I see little of, for he 's working hard at the languages, and, from what the girls say, with great success. Of course, this is all for the best; but it's little use French or even Chinese would be to him in the Customs or the Board of Trade, and it's there I'm trying to get him. Vickars told me last week that his name is down on no less than four lists, and it will be bad luck but we 'll bit upon something. Between ourselves, I'm not over-pleased with Vickars. Whenever I write to him about James, his reply is always what he's doing