Won't you write me a long letter now, Anne?
P. S. Give my respectful compliments to Betty, and say that I enquired after her health with the most emphatic energy of impassioned avidity.
DEAR MADAM,--The incongruity of the dates in these letters you will immediately perceive. The truth is that I had written the foregoing heap of nothingness six or seven days ago, but I was prevented from sending it by a variety of disagreeable little impediments.
Mr. Massy must be arrived in Cambridge by this time; but to call on an utter stranger just arrived with so trivial a message as yours and his uncle's love to him, when I myself had been in Cambridge five or six weeks, would appear rather awkward, not to say ludicrous. If, however, I meet him at any wine party (which is by no means improbable) I shall take the opportunity of mentioning it _en passant_. As to Mr. M.'s debts, the most intimate friends in college are perfect strangers to each other's affairs; consequently it is little likely that I should procure any information of this kind.
I hope and trust that neither yourself nor my sisters have experienced any ill effects from this wonderful change of weather. A very slight cold is the only favour with which it has honoured _me_. I feel myself apprehensive for all of you, but more particularly for Anne, whose frame I think most susceptible of cold.
Yesterday a Frenchman came dancing into my room, of which he made but three steps, and presented me with a card. I had scarcely collected, by glancing my eye over it, that he was a tooth-monger, before he seized hold of my muzzle, and, baring my teeth (as they do a horse's, in order to know his age), he exclaimed, as if in violent agitation: "Mon Dieu! Monsieur, all your teeth will fall out in a day or two, unless you permit me the honour of _scaling_ them!" This ineffable piece of assurance discovered such a genius for impudence, that I could not suffer it to go unrewarded. So, after a hearty laugh, I sat down, and let the rascal _chouse_ me out of half a guinea by scraping my grinders--the more readily, indeed, as I recollected the great penchant which all your family have for delicate teeth.
So (I hear) Allen[27] will be most precipitately emancipated. Good luck have thou of thy emancipation, Bob-bee! Tell him from me that if he does not kick Richards'[28] fame out of doors by the superiority of his own, I will never forgive him.