I am glad you are pleased with that description I made you of my humour, for, though you had disliked it, I am afraid ’tis past my power to help.  You need not make excuses neither for yours; no other would please me half so well.  That gaiety which you say is only esteemed would be insupportable to me, and I can as little endure a tongue that’s always in motion as I could the click of a mill.  Of all the company this place is stored with, there is but two persons whose conversation is at all easy; one is my eldest niece, who, sure, was sent into the world to show ’tis possible for a woman to be silent; the other, a gentleman whose mistress died just when they should have married; and though ’tis many years since, one may read it in his face still.  His humour was very good, I believe, before that accident, for he will yet say things pleasant enough, but ’tis so seldom that he speaks at all, and when he does ’tis with so sober a look, that one may see he is not moved at all himself when he diverts the company most.  You will not be jealous though I say I like him very much.  If you were not secure in me, you might be so in him.  He would expect his mistress should rise again to reproach his inconstancy if he made court to anything but her memory.  Methinks we three (that is, my niece, and he and I) do become this house the worst that can be, unless I should take into the number my brother Peyton himself too; for to say truth his, for another sort of melancholy, is not less than ours.  What can you imagine we did this last week, when to our constant company there was added a colonel and his lady, a son of his and two daughters, a maid of honour to the Queen of Bohemia, and another colonel or a major, I know not which, besides all the tongue they brought with them; the men the greatest drinkers that ever I saw, which did not at all agree with my brother, who would not be drawn to it to save a kingdom if it lay at stake and no other way to redeem it?  But, in earnest, there was one more to be pitied besides us, and that was Colonel Thornhill’s wife, as pretty a young woman as I have seen.  She is Sir John Greenvil’s sister, and has all his good-nature, with a great deal of beauty and modesty, and wit enough.  This innocent creature is sacrificed to the veriest beast that ever was.  The first day she came hither he intended, it seems, to have come with her, but by the way called in to see an old acquaintance, and bid her go on, he would overtake her, but did not come till next night, and then so drunk he was led immediately to bed, whither she was to follow him when she had supped.  I blest myself at her patience, as you may do that I could find anything to fill up this paper withal.  Adieu.