I have had one case of fracture in the leg of Mrs. Finkey’s Italian greyhound, which Jack threw a flower-pot at in the dark the other night.  I tied it up in two splints cut out of a clothes-peg in a manner which I stated to be the most popular at the Hotel Dieu at Paris; and the old girl was so pleased that she has asked me to keep Christmas-day at her house, where she burns the Yule log, makes a bowl of wassail, and all manner of games.  We are going to bore a hole in the Yule log with an old trephine, and ram it chuck-full of gunpowder; and Jack’s little brother is to catch six or seven frogs, under pain of a severe licking, which are to be put into one of the vegetable dishes.  The old girl has her two nieces home for the holidays—­devilish handsome, larky girls—­so we have determined to take some mistletoe, and give a practical demonstration of the action of the orbicularis oris and ievatores labiae superioris et inferioris.  If either of them have got any tin, I shall try and get all right with them; but if the brads don’t flourish I shall leave it alone, for a wife is just the worst piece of furniture a fellow can bring into his house, especially if he inclines to conviviality; although to be sure a medical man ought to consider her as part of his stock in trade, to be taken at a fair valuation amidst his stopple-bottles, mortars, measures, and pill-rollers.

If business does not tumble in well, in the course of a few weeks, we have another plan in view; but I only wish to resort to it on emergency, in case we should be found out.  The railway passes at the bottom of my garden, and Jack thinks, with a few pieces of board, he can contrive to run the engine and tender off the line, which is upon a tolerably high embankment.  I need not tell you all this is in strict confidence; and if the plan does not jib, which is not very probable, will bring lots of grist to the mill.  I have put the engineer and stoker at a sure guinea a head for the inquest; and the concussions in the second class will be of unknown value.  If practicable, I mean to have an elderly gentleman “who must not be moved under any consideration;” so I shall get him into my house for the term of his indisposition, which may possibly be a very long one.  I can give him up my own bedroom, and sleep myself in an old harpsichord, which I bought cheap at a sale, and disembowelled into a species of deceptive bed.  I think the hint might put “people about to marry” up to a dodge in the way of spare beds.  Everybody now sees through the old chiffonier and wardrobe turn-up impositions, but the grand piano would beat them; only it should be kept locked, for fear any one given to harmony might commence playing a fantasia on the bolster.