Dear Wretch,— It's little you deserve that I should
be writing to you at this minute ; for not one scrap of your
pen have I received since the month of August last How-
ever, you always were a wretch, and you always will be,
and you can't help it; and, besides, my wife asks me to
explain to you why she can't write to you just now. She
is a prisoner with Mabs and Norman, amusing themselves
with a dose of scarlatina ; but they are going on all right,
and after the proper period of probation she will be re-
stored to her Uberty again (as much of it as we have got
in this wretched old coimtry). I wonder how it is that the
correspondence of American young ladies always goes

astray. Miss was down here a Uttle while ago. She

wrote to us suggesting a meeting. Of course, my wife
couldn't go ; and I was too timid and shy to brave the in-
terview by myself, and so I sent her a note sa3ring that
there was illness in the house, which note I sent to the
address she gave me. Ten days thereafter it was returned
through the dead-letter office ; and though I subsequently
got it forwarded through a friend, during that time she
must have considered us guilty of the discourtesy of not
even answering her invitation. You're a queer lot of people,
you are. Mr. Pettie writes me this morning that he sent a
photograph to Joe [Miss Anderson's brother] to the address
that he gave, and that that was returned, as he had gone
away. I have now asked him to send it to the Clarendon
Hotel, New York ; but by the time it gets there it will be
" gone away " again. . . . THE D. D. B. V,

287



WILLIAM BLACK

To the same. « r* ««

Paston House, Brighton.
