I have been quietly wondering from what source you have culled so much pestilential stuff, and how long it took you, and where you locked up and kept such a swarm of outlandish distorted expressions, of which you made some yourself and resurrected others from the graves in which they lay buried somewhere. As the verse puts it, Plague take you, that you garner mortal woes, such a mess of filthy bilge water did you get together and fling over me, when I had done you no harm at all. Youseem to me not only to be destitute of friends and relatives and well-wishers but never to have fallen in with an independent man practising frank- ness, who by telling you the truth might have relieved you, dropsical as you are and in danger of bursting with the disease, although to yourself you appear to be in good point and you consider your calami the pink of condition. You are praised by the fools, to be sure, who do not know what ails you; but the intelligent fittingly pity you.
