I have a notion, dear Don, that I am not writing very coherently, as you, whether pransus or impransus, almost always do.  Under agitating circumstances you are cool, and I verily think that you would have reported the earthquake at Lisbon without missing one squashed hidalgo, one drop of the blue blood spilt, one convent unroofed, or one convent belle damaged.  Your report would have been minutely circumstantial enough to have found favor with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., who for so long a time refused to believe in the Portuguese convulsion.  But we are not all fit by nature to put about butter-tubs in July.  I plead guilty to an excitable temperament.  The Bowery youth here speak of a kind of perspiration which, metaphorically, they designate as “a cast-iron sweat.”  This for the last twelve hours has been my own agonizing style of exudation.  And, moreover, the startling event of which I am to write has (to borrow again from the sage Montaigne) created in me “so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one upon another, without design or order, that, the better at leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to commit them to writing, hoping in time to make them ashamed of themselves.”  The novelty of my position causes me to shamble and shuffle, now to pause painfully, and then to dance like a droll.  I go out from the presence of my household, that I may vent myself by private absurdities and exclusive antics, I retire into remote corners, that I may grin fearfully, unseen of Mistress Gamp and my small servant.  I am possessed by a shouting devil, who is continually prompting me to give the “hip-hip-hurrah!” under circumstances which might split apex and base of several of my most important arteries,—­which might bring on apoplexy, epilepsy, suffusion of the brain, or hernia,—­which might cause death,—­yes, Sir,—­death of the mother, father, and child.

—­Really, good friends, I ask your pardon!  I do not know what I have done.  Did I collar you, Dr. Slop?  Send in your bill tomorrow!  Did I smash the instruments beyond repair?  And should you say now,—­just speaking off-hand,—­that two hundred and fifty dollars would be money enough to repair them?  Of course, I can commit highway robbery, if it be absolutely necessary.  My dear Mrs. Gamp, I fully appreciate the propriety of your suggestions.  You want one quart of gin;—­I comprehend.  Shall it be your Hollands, your Aromatic Scheidam, your Nantz, or our own proud Columbian article?  You want one quart of rum, potus e saccharo confectus! You want one quart of brandy.  You want one gallon of wine.  You want a dozen of brown-stout.  You want the patent vulcanized India-rubber pump.  You want anise,—­ pimpinella anisum;—­I comprehend.  You want castor-oil,—­a very fine medicine indeed,—­I tasted it myself when a boy.  You want magnesia.  You want the patent Vesuvian night-lamp.  Madam, that volcanic utensil shall be forthcoming.