my friends is ever the same. I wish though I had thee to nurse me, but
I am denied that. Write to me twice a week at least. God bless thee,
my child, and believe me ever, ever, thy affectionate father."

The despondent tone of this letter was to be only too soon justified.
The "vile influenza" proved to be or became a pleurisy. On Thursday,
March 10, he was bled three times, and blistered on the day after. And
on the Tuesday following, in evident consciousness that his end was
near, he penned that cry "for pity and pardon," as Thackeray calls
it--the first as well as the last, and which sounds almost as strange
as it does piteous from those mocking lips:

"The physician says I am better.... God knows, for I feel myself
sadly wrong, and shall, if I recover, be a long while of gaining
strength. Before I have gone through half the letter I must stop to
rest my weak hand a dozen times. Mr. James was so good as to call
upon me yesterday. I felt emotions not to be described at the sight
of him, and he overjoyed me by talking a great deal of you. Do,
dear Mrs. James, entreat him to come to-morrow or next day, for perhaps
I have not many days or hours to live. I want to ask a favour
of him, if I find myself worse, that I shall beg of you if in this
wrestling I come off conqueror. My spirits are fled. It is a bad omen;
do not weep, my dear lady. Your tears are too precious to be shed
for me. Bottle them up, and may the cork never be drawn. Dearest,
kindest, gentlest, and best of women! may health, peace, and happiness
prove your handmaids. If I die, cherish the remembrance of
me, and forget the follies which you so often condemned, which my
heart, not my head, betrayed me into. Should my child, my Lydia,
want a mother, may I hope you will (if she is left parentless) take her
to your bosom? You are the only woman on earth I can depend