I hope I am not so tired but that you may be able to read this. I have been at it almost incessantly, day and night for a week, and I am afraid my handwriting suffers. But in all other respects I am only a giant refreshed.
We meet next Saturday you recollect? Until then, and ever afterwards,
It is almost an impertinence to tell you how delightful your flowers were to me; for you who thought of that beautiful and delicately-timed token of sympathy and remembrance, must know it very well already.
I do assure you that I have hardly ever received anything with so much pleasure in all my life. They are not faded yet--are on my table here--but never can fade out of my remembrance.
I should be less than a Young Gas, and more than an old Manager--that commemorative portfolio is here too--if I could relieve my heart of half that it could say to you. All my house are my witnesses that you have quite filled it, and this note is my witness that I can _not_ empty it.
Ever faithfully and gratefully your friend.
LONDON, TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _26th March, 1852._
I beg to thank you for your interesting pamphlet, and to add that I shall be very happy to accept an article from you on the subject[54] for "Household Words." I should already have suggested to you that I should have great pleasure in receiving contributions from one so well and peculiarly qualified to treat of many interesting subjects, but that I felt a delicacy in encroaching on your other occupations. Will you excuse my remarking that to make an article on this particular subject useful, it is essential to address the employed as well as the employers? In the case of the Sheffield grinders the difficulty was, for many years, not with the masters, but the men. Painters who use white lead are with the greatest difficulty persuaded to be particular in washing their hands, and I daresay that I need not remind you that one could not generally induce domestic servants to attend to the commonest sanitary principles in their work without absolutely forcing them to experience their comfort and convenience.
[53] The "Medical Aspects of Death, and the Medical Aspects of the Human Mind."
[54] The injurious effects of the manufacture of lucifer matches on the employed.