“The summer, or what might have been the summer, has
slipt away, and the autumn, or what ought to be he autumn, is passing after it,
and I have not
| 144 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 48. |
“I can tell you, however, now, that I shall start from home with my daughter Edith as early as possible in November, or, if possible, before the beginning of that month; and that after halting a week or ten days in London, I shall pursue my course to Crediton.
“The summer has brought with it its usual flock of
strangers, some of them sufficiently amusing. My civilities to them are
regulated something by the recommendations with which they present themselves,
and a little more perhaps by their likeability, which depends something upon
the cut of their jib. You know how impossible it is not
to read faces, and be in some degree influenced by what we see in them. We have
had two travellers from New England—young men both, and well qualified to keep
up the good impression which their countrymen have left here. Last week we had
an Englishman, who having travelled in the Levant, and been made prisoner by
the Bedouins, near Mount Sinai, chooses to relate his adventures instead of
publishing them, and tells Arabian stories after the manner of the professed
story-tellers in the East. I wish you had seen him the other evening gravely
delivering a tale of a magic ring (it was a full hour long) to a circle of some
sixteen persons in this room, the vicar being one of the number. But the most
interesting stranger who has found his way here is a Somersetshire
man—Morrison by name, who, at the
age of two or three and thirty, and beginning with little or nothing, has
re-
| Ætat. 48. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 145 |
“My household are in tolerable order. It has been increased this year by the acquisition of a most worthy Tom cat, who when the tenants of the next house departed was invited to this, where he received the name of Rumpelstilzchen, and has become a great favourite. I cannot say of him as Bedford does of a similar animal, that he is the best for nothing cat in the world, because he has done good service upon the rats, and been successively promoted to the rank of baron, viscount, and earl. In most other things we are as you left us, except that just now the waters are not in their place, having overflowed their banks.
“God bless you, my dear Lightfoot!
