“’My DEAR Miss------ I ought to have written to you long before now, but
I have suffered so much from the constant changes of the weather that
the wonder is I am able to hold a pen.  During the whole summer the heat
was really quite intolerable, not a drop of rain or a breath of wind,
the cattle dying for absolute want, the vegetables dear and scarce, and
as for fruit—­that, you know, in this town, is at all times scarce and
bad, and particularly when there is the greatest occasion for it.  In the
autumn we never had two days alike, either wind or rain, or frost, or
something or another; and as for our winter—­you know what that
is—­either a constant splash of rain, or a frost like to take the skin
off you.  For these six weeks I may say I have had a constant running at
my head, with a return of my old complaint; but as for doctors, I see no
good they do, except to load people’s stomachs and pick their pockets: 
everything now is imposition; I really think the very pills are not what
they were thirty years ago.  How people with families continue to live is
a mystery to me; and people still going on marrying, in the face of
national debt, taxes, a new war, a starving population, ruined commerce,
and no outlet for young men in any quarter—­God only knows what is to be
the end of all this!  In spite of all this, these thoughtless young
creatures, the Truemans, have thought proper to make out their marriage;
he is just five-and-twenty, and she is not yet nineteen! so you may
judge what a prudent, well-managed establishment it will be.  He is in a
good enough business at present, but in these times who can tell what’s
to happen?  He may be wallowing in wealth to-day, and bankrupt to-morrow. 
His sister’s marriage with Fairplay is now quite off, and her prospects
for life, poor thing, completely wrecked!  Her looks are entirely gone,
and her spirits quite broken.  She is not like the same creature, and, to
be sure, to a girl who had set her heart upon being married, it must be
a great and severe disappointment, for this was her only chance, unless
she tries India, and the expense of the outfit must be a complete bar to
that.  You would hear that poor Lady Oldhouse has had a son—­it seemed a
desirable thing, situated as they are with an entailed property; and yet
when I look around me, and see the way that sons go on, the dissipation
and extravagance, and the heartbreak they are to their parents, I think
a son anything but a blessing.  No word of anything of that kind to the
poor Richardsons; with all their riches, they are without anyone to come
after them.  The Prowleys are up in the air at having got what they call
“a fine appointment” for their fourth son, but for my part I’m really
sick of hearing of boys going to India, for after all what do they do
there?  I never hear of their sending home anything but black children,
and when they come home themselves, what do they bring but yellow faces,
worn-out constitutions, and livers like cocked-hats, crawling about from