Mary has left a little space for me to fill up with nonsense, as the geographers used to cram monsters in the voids of the maps, and call it _Terra Incognita_. She has told you how she has taken to water like a hungry otter. I too limp after her in lame imitation, [1] but it goes against me a little at first. I have been acquaintance with it now for full four days, and it seems a moon. I am full of cramps and rheumatisms, and cold internally, so that fire won't warm me; yet I bear all for virtue's sake. Must I then leave you, gin, rum, brandy, _aqua-vitae_, pleasant, jolly fellows? Damn temperance and he that first invented it! -- some Anti-Noahite. Coleridge has powdered his head, and looks like Bacchus, -- Bacchus ever sleek and young.
He is going to turn sober, but his clock has not struck yet; meantime he pours down goblet after goblet, the second to see where the first is gone, the third to see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there is another coming, and a fifth to say he is not sure he is the last. C. L.
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