These, Your Lordship, are serious domestic evils; and I wish I could say they were confined to the house. But the workmen at the Mills are so ungrateful as to hate my husband for the over care he obliges them to take of their own lives; and make no secret of wanting his removal, by trying to torment him into resignation. Not a day passes without squabbles about smoking, for Mr. D. is apt to sniff tobacco, and insists on searching pockets for pipes, which the labourers one and all decline; and besides scuffles, there have been several pay offs on the spot. The consequence is ill will and bad blood to their superior, and it is become a standing practical joke to play upon the family feelings and fears. I have twice suffered all the disagreeables of escaping from nothing at all in my night dress, exposed to rheumatism, and the natives of a low neighbourhood; indeed only last Sunday the fire bell was rung by nobody, and no wind at all to speak of. Another party at enmity is Doctor Worral and all his establishment; because Mr. D. felt it his public duty to have the Doctor up before a Justice, for allowing his Young Gentlemen to send up fire-balloons. We had one day of dreadful excitement on my husband’s part, through a wicked little wretch of a pupil flashing the sunshine into the Mill with a bit of looking-glass; and of course we are indebted for the Swing letters we receive to the same juvenile quarters. To make bad worse, Mr. D. takes them all for Gospel, and the extra watchings, and patrollings, and precautions, after getting a threatening notice, are enough to wear out all our hearts. As regards the School, I am ready to agree that it is too near the Works; and to tell the truth, I shake in my shoes as much as Mr. D., every fifth of November, at each squib and cracker that goes off. On the same score our own sons are an everlasting misery to us when they are at home; which they seldom are, poor fellows, on that account. But if there is one thing above another that boys delight to play with, it is gunpowder; and being at the very fountainhead, Your Lordship may conceive the constant care it is to prevent their getting at it, and what is worse, not always crowned with success. Indeed even more innocent playthings are obliged to be guarded against; for as their father says, “a little brat, just breeched, may strike light enough to blow up a whole neighbourhood, through only spinning a peg-tog in a paved yard.”