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.  It was like a thousand people laughing, or the Goblin Page.  He imagined afterwards that the whole office had been laughing at him, so strange did his own sounds strike upon his nonsensorium.  But Tommy has laughed his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself reduced from an abused income of L600 per annum to one sixth of the sum, after thirty-six years’ tolerably good service.  The quality of mercy was not strained in his behalf; the gentle dews dropped not on him from heaven.  It just came across me that I was writing to Canton.  Will you drop in to-morrow night?  Fanny Kelly is coming, if she does not cheat us.  Mrs. Gold is well, but proves “uncoined,” as the lovers about Wheathampstead would say.

I have not had such a quiet half hour to sit down to a quiet letter for many years.  I have not been interrupted above four times.  I wrote a letter the other day in alternate lines, black ink and red, and you cannot think how it chilled the flow of ideas.  Next Monday is Whit-Monday.  What a reflection!  Twelve years ago, and I should have kept that and the following holiday in the fields a-maying.  All of those pretty pastoral delights are over.  This dead, everlasting dead desk,—­how it weighs the spirit of a gentleman down!  This dead wood of the desk instead of your living trees!  But then, again, I hate the joskins, a name for Hertfordshire bumpkins.  Each state of life has its inconvenience; but then, again, mine has more than one.  Not that I repine, or grudge, or murmur at my destiny.  I have meat and drink, and decent apparel,—­I shall, at least, when I get a new hat,

A red-haired man just interrupted me.  He has broke the current of my thoughts, I haven’t a word to add, I don’t know why I send this letter, but I have had a hankering to hear about you some days.  Perhaps it will go off before your reply comes.  If it don’t, I assure you no letter was ever welcomer from, you, from Paris or Macao.