Something I will say!  ‘Polka,’ forsooth!—­one lady whose head could not, and another whose feet could not, dance!—­But I talked a little to your brother whom I like more and more:  it comforts me that he is yours.

So, Thursday,—­thank you from the heart!  I am well, and about to go out.  This week I have done nothing to ’Luria’—­is it that my ring is gone?  There surely is something to forgive in me—­for that shameful business—­or I should not feel as I do in the matter:  but you did forgive me.

God bless my own, only love—­ever—­

Yours wholly

R.B.

N.B.  An antiquarian friend of mine in old days picked up a nondescript wonder of a coin.  I just remember he described it as Rhomboid in shape—­cut, I fancy, out of church-plate in troubled times.  What did my friend do but get ready a box, lined with velvet, and properly compartmented, to have always about him, so that the next such coin he picked up, say in Cheapside, he might at once transfer to a place of safety ... his waistcoat pocket being no happy receptacle for the same.  I saw the box—­and encouraged the man to keep a vigilant eye.

Parallel. R.B. having found an unicorn....

Do you forgive these strips of paper?  I could not wait to send for more—­having exhausted my stock.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday Evening
[Post-mark, December 10, 1845.]

It was right of you to write ... (now see what jangling comes of not using the fit words....  I said ‘right,’ not to say ‘kind’) ... right of you to write to me to-day—­and I had begun to be disappointed already because the post seemed to be past, when suddenly the knock brought the letter which deserves all this praising.  If not ‘kind’ ... then kindest ... will that do better?  Perhaps.

Mr. Kenyon was here to-day and asked when you were coming again—­and I, I answered at random ... ’at the end of the week—­Thursday or Friday’—­which did not prevent another question about ’what we were consulting about.’  He said that he ‘must have you,’ and had written to beg you to go to his door on days when you came here; only murmuring something besides of neither Thursday nor Friday being disengaged days with him.  Oh, my disingenuousness!—­Then he talked again of ‘Saul.’  A true impression the poem has made on him!  He reads it every night, he says, when he comes home and just before he goes to sleep, to put his dreams into order, and observed very aptly, I thought, that it reminded him of Homer’s shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl and life.  Quite ill he took it of me the ’not expecting him to like it so much’ and retorted on me with most undeserved severity (as I felt it), that I ’never understood anybody to have any sensibility except myself.’  Wasn’t it severe, to come from dear Mr. Kenyon?  But he has caught some sort of evil spirit from your