Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; news, sentiment, and puns.  In the latter, I include all non-serious subjects; or subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my fashion, non-seriously.—­And first, for news.  In them the most desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall be true.  But what security can I have that what I now send you for truth shall not before you get it unaccountably turn into a lie?  For instance, our mutual friend P. is at this present writing—­my Now—­in good health, and enjoys a fair share of worldly reputation.  You are glad to hear it.  This is natural and friendly.  But at this present reading—­your Now—­he may possibly be in the Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason ought to abate something of your transport (i.e. at hearing he was well, &c.), or at least considerably to modify it.  I am going to the play this evening, to have a laugh with Munden.  You have no theatre, I think you told me, in your land of d——­d realities.  You naturally lick your lips, and envy me my felicity.  Think but a moment, and you will correct the hateful emotion.  Why, it is Sunday morning with you, and 1823.  This confusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two presents, is in a degree common to all postage.  But if I sent you word to Bath or the Devises, that I was expecting the aforesaid treat this evening, though at the moment you received the intelligence my full feast of fun would be over, yet there would be for a day or two after, as you would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my mental palate, which would give rational encouragement for you to foster a portion at least of the disagreeable passion, which it was in part my intention to produce.  But ten months hence your envy or your sympathy would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead.  Not only does truth, in these long intervals, un-essence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction for the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage.  What a wild improbable banter I put upon you, some three years since ——­ of Will Weatherall having married a servant-maid!  I remember gravely consulting you how we were to receive her—­for Will’s wife was in no case to be rejected; and your no less serious replication in the matter; how tenderly you advised an abstemious introduction of literary topics before the lady, with a caution not to be too forward in bringing on the carpet matters more within the sphere of her intelligence; your deliberate judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how far jacks, and spits, and mops, could with propriety be introduced as subjects; whether the conscious avoiding of all such matters in discourse would not have a worse look than the taking of them casually in our way; in what manner we should carry ourselves to our maid Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall being by; whether we should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of respect for Will’s wife, by treating Becky with our customary chiding before her,