acquaintance. I can understand and sympathise with this. I
remember the shortest note was a treat to me, when I was at the
above-named place; therefore I write. I have also a third reason:
it is a haunting terror lest you should imagine I forget
you--that my regard cools with absence. It is not in my nature to
forget your nature; though, I dare say, I should spit fire and
explode sometimes if we lived together continually; and you, too,
would get angry, and then we should get reconciled and jog on as
before. Do you ever get dissatisfied with your own temper when
you are long fixed to one place, in one scene, subject to one
monotonous species of annoyance? I do: I am now in that
unenviable frame of mind; my humour, I think, is too soon over-
thrown, too sore, too demonstrative and vehement. I almost long
for some of the uniform serenity you describe in Mrs. ----'s
disposition; or, at least, I would fain have her power of self-
control and concealment; but I would not take her artificial
habits and ideas along with her composure. After all I should
prefer being as I am. . . You do right not to be annoyed at any
maxims of conventionality you meet with. Regard all new ways in
the light of fresh experience for you: if you see any honey
gather it." . . . "I don't, after all, consider that we ought to
despise everything we see in the world, merely because it is not
what we are accustomed to. I suspect, on the contrary, that there
are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs
that appear to us absurd; and if I were ever again to find myself
amongst strangers, I should be solicitous to examine before I
condemned. Indiscriminating irony and faultfinding are just
sumphishness, and that is all. Anne is now much better, but papa
has been for near a fortnight far from well with the influenza;
he has at times a most distressing cough, and his spirits are