24. I will now seal up this letter, and send it; for I reckon to have none from you (’tis morning now) between this and night; and I will put it in the post with my own hands. I am going out in great haste; so farewell, etc.
IT was a little cross in Presto not to send to-day to the Coffee-house to see whether there was a letter from MD before I sent away mine; but, faith, I did it on purpose, because I would scorn to answer two letters of yours successively. This way of journal is the worst in the world for writing of news, unless one does it the last day; and so I will observe henceforward, if there be any politics or stuff worth sending. My shin mends in spite of the scratching last night. I dined to-day at Ned Southwell’s with the Bishop of Ossory { 176a} and a parcel of Irish gentlemen. Have you yet seen any of the _Spectators_? Just three weeks to-day since I had your last, N. 11. I am afraid I have lost one by the packet that was taken; that will vex me, considering the pains MD take to write, especially poor pretty Stella, and her weak eyes. God bless them and the owner, and send them well, and little me together, I hope ere long. This illness of Mr. Harley puts everything backwards, and he is still down, and like to be so, by that extravasated blood which comes from his breast to the wound: it was by the second blow Guiscard gave him after the penknife was broken. I am shocked at that villainy whenever I think of it. Biddy Floyd is past danger, but will lose all her beauty: she had them mighty thick, especially about her nose.
25. Morning. I wish you a merry New Year; this is the first day of the year, you know, with us, and ’tis Lady-day. I must rise and go to my Lord Keeper: it is not shaving-day to-day, so I shall be early. I am to dine with Mr. Secretary St. John. Good-morrow, my mistresses both, good-morrow. Stella will be peeping out of her room at Mrs. De Caudres’ { 176b} down upon the folks as they come from church; and there comes Mrs. Proby, { 176c} and that is my Lady Southwell, { 176d} and there is Lady Betty Rochfort. { 176e} I long to hear how you are settled in your new lodgings. I wish I were rid of my old ones, and that Mrs. Brent could contrive to put up my books in boxes, and lodge them in some safe place, and you keep my papers of importance. But I must rise, I tell you.—At night. So I visited and dined as I told you, and what of that? We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence apiece: and the fellow that showed would point to his body, and, “See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given him by his Grace the Duke of Ormond; and this is the wound,” etc., and then the show was over, and another set of rabble came in. ’Tis hard our laws would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried; and in the eye of our law every man is innocent till then.—Mr. Harley is still very weak, and never out of bed.