So I have given _my_ feathers a shake, and am all right again. Give _your_ feathers a shake, and take a cheery flutter into the air of Hertfordshire.
Great reports from Dolby and also from Fields! But I keep myself quite calm, and hold my decision in abeyance until I shall have book, chapter, and verse before me. Dolby hoped he could leave Uncle Sam on the 11th of this month.
Sydney has passed as a lieutenant, and appeared at home yesterday, all of a sudden, with the consequent golden garniture on his sleeve, which I, God forgive me, stared at without the least idea that it meant promotion.
I am glad you see a certain unlikeness to anything in the American story. Upon myself it has made the strangest impression of reality and originality!! And I feel as if I had read something (by somebody else), which I should never get out of my mind!!! The main idea of the narrator's position towards the other people was the idea that I _had_ for my next novel in A. Y. R. But it is very curious that I did not in the least see how to begin his state of mind until I walked into Hoghton Towers one bright April day with Dolby.
CONTRADICTING A NEWSPAPER REPORT OF HIS BEING IN A CRITICAL STATE OF HEALTH.
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Tuesday, Sept. 3rd, 1867._
This is to certify that the undersigned victim of a periodical paragraph-disease, which usually breaks out once in every seven years (proceeding to England by the overland route to India and per Cunard line to America, where it strikes the base of the Rocky Mountains, and, rebounding to Europe, perishes on the steppes of Russia), is _not_ in a "critical state of health," and has _not_ consulted "eminent surgeons," and never was better in his life, and is _not_ recommended to proceed to the United States for "cessation from literary labour," and has not had so much as a headache for twenty years.
"ALL THE YEAR ROUND" OFFICE, _Monday, Sept. 16th, 1867._
Going over the prompt-book carefully, I see one change in your part to which (on Lytton's behalf) I positively object, as I am quite certain he would not consent to it. It is highly injudicious besides, as striking out the best known line in the play.
Turn to your part in Act III., the speech beginning
