.--I want to know how your brother is, if you have heard
lately. I want to know about you, I wish you were nearer. How are my
cousins, the Gladmans of Wheathampstead, and Farmer Bruton? Mrs. Bruton
is a glorious woman,
"Hail, Mackery End!" [1]
This is a fragment of a blank-verse poem which. I once meditated, but
got no farther. The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the
strange phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have known, man and madman,
twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and
more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing,
dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap, a little too fond of the
creature,--who isn't at times? But Tommy had _not_ brains to work off an
overnight's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in
he wandered the other morning drunk with last night and with a
superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came
staggering under his double burden, like trees in Java, bearing at once
blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other
traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament.
Some wretched calico that he had mopped his poor oozy front with, had
rendered up its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash
it, but swore it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of
indigo; and set up a laugh which I did not think the lungs of mortal man
were competent to.
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