For the rest, we are a little merrier than usual. Rex Gascoigne--you remember a head you admired among my sketches, a fellow with a good upper lip, reading law--has got some rooms in town now not far off us, and has had a neat sister (upper lip also good) staying with him the last fortnight. I have introduced them both to my mother and the girls, who have found out from Miss Gascoigne that she is cousin to your Vandyke duchess!!! I put the notes of exclamation to mark the surprise that the information at first produced on my feeble understanding. On reflection I discovered that there was not the least ground for surprise, unless I had beforehand believed that nobody could be anybody's cousin without my knowing it. This sort of surprise, I take it, depends on a liveliness of the spine, with a more or less constant nullity of brain. There was a fellow I used to meet at Rome who was in an effervescence of surprise at contact with the simplest information. Tell him what you would--that you were fond of easy boots--he would always say, "No! are you?" with the same energy of wonder: the very fellow of whom pastoral Browne wrote prophetically,

'For the rest, we are a little merrier than usual. Rex Gascoigne - you remember a head you admired among my sketches, good upper lip - has got some rooms in town not far off, and has had a neat sister (upper lip also good) staying with him the last fortnight. I have introduced them to my mother and the girls, who have found out from Miss Gascoigne that she is cousin to your Vandyke duchess!!! I put the notes of exclamation to mark the surprise that the information at first produced on my feeble understanding. On reflection I discovered that there was not the least ground for surprise, unless I believed that nobody could be anybody's cousin without my knowing it.
