Latin though I have got a Prize for Spelling and Grammer but we all have prizes for something to please our parents when we go home. The only treat we have is reddishes out of the garden when they are got old and burning hot and popgunny and them wont last long as masters going to keep pigs. I suppose then we shall have measely pork to match the stinking beef. The fellows say its because the Doctor swops Stokes’s schooling agin butchers meat and as the edication is so very bad old Stokes on his part wont send in any better quality. Thats whats called mutual accommodation in the newspapers. Give my love to Mrs. Rumsey with thanks for the plum cake only next time more sweetmeat, and say I am almost sure I sometimes sleep in a damp bed. I am certain sure Mrs. Rumsey would advise you the same as I do, namely for me to be took away, without running more risks, if it was only for fear of Mac Kenzie, for hes a regular tyrant and hectors over us all. Hes three parts a nigger and you cant punch his head so as to do any good, and only last Monday he was horsed for wanting to googe little Jones’s eyes out and for nothing at all but just looking at his towel to see if the black come off. I am ready to take my drop down dead if it is not all faithfully true, Mac Kenzie and the beef and the Footman and all, and I do hope you will trust to my word and be agreeable to my offer to be took away and I do hope it will be before next Saturday for that’s Mr. Paynes visiting day, the Drawing Master as I call him, but some of the fellows have nick named him Sinbad because he hunted the elephants so for their teeth. Philip Frank says theres a capital school at Richmond where the Master permits fishing and boating and cigars and gunpowder and poney chaises for only sixty guineas a year. I often think if my poor dear late Mother was alive it is just the genteel sort of School she would like me to be finished off at. But thats as you prefer and if you will only promise upon your honour to remove me I wont run away. I forgot to say I have very bad head akes sometimes besides the stomach akes and last week I was up in the nussery for being feverish and spotty, and I had to take antimonious wine but nothing made me sick except the gruel. Precious stuff it is and tastes like slate pencil dust and salt. I was in great hopes it was scarlet fever or something catching that I might be sent home to you, but the fisician said my rash was only chickings or stinging nettles. Altogether I am so unhappy at not getting on in my learning that I do beg and pray to be took away, and I will be very dutiful and grateful all the rest of my days. Do, pray, do, and consider me down on my bended knees. And I will wish you every comfort in life if you will only provide for mine, and I will pray for your gout to go away for ever and ever, and then I will nurse your last days and be such a good son to you as never was except me. And in that case I owe three shillings to the footman and shouldn’t