My Dearest Father,—­I can fully, though not perhaps so fully as you can, enter into your great anxieties about your five great boys, and actuated by this sympathy I sit down to say a word more about India.—­I do hope you have not yet given Lady Spencer a decisive answer, as the horizon seems a little to clear of its indigenous hurricanes.  Since my last letter to you I have, I can truly say, made every effort to speak like a man, but, alas I too unsuccessfully:  my tongue seems only able to say veto to the Church, and that speaking is a necessary qualification “needs no demonstration.”  Aunt Fanny has strongly recommended me to think more seriously about it, and Mr. M’Neile has also given me his valuable opinion on the subject, that at least I must inquire what I am more fitted for, and not lightly put aside those opportunities which Providence places in my way.  However, I would by no means be hurried in my choice either way:  I must inquire what is the office of a writer; whether oratorical powers be not requisite, &c., for as yet I have a very vague and indefinite idea of what I reject or choose.  I really do find my impediment most truly a grievous impediment to what appears more desirable; but I would wish to consider this, as every other constitutional infirmity or affliction, as but an instrument in the hands of God to subserve some wise purpose.  Let this letter therefore, if you please, serve as a preventive, if not too late, to your final decision about it, and put me, my dear father, in possession of more of the peculiar features, in a writer’s employment if you can, I hope to be with you on Friday.

Till then, and ever believe me, my dear father, your affectionate
son,

M.F.  Tupper.

Albury, December 28th, Wednesday.

The day after I took my degree as a barrister, I married my cousin after a nine years’ engagement; my father having resolved I should not marry without a profession.  I did my best at this vocation of the law much against the grain, and actually achieved, with Lewin’s help, a voluminous will, and a marriage settlement, with some accessory deeds, procured for me by my mother’s friend Mr. Hunt, through one Dangerfield, a solicitor.  I have often felt anxious to know how far my conveyancing held water; but the thought of Lewin’s skill has comforted me—­and besides I have never heard a word about it now for half a century.  My fee for all was fifty guineas—­pretty well for a first and last exploit in the way of law and its rewards.

As I am just leaving my father’s house for Park Village, and thereafter Albury, here I will insert two little memories of past days when I lived with my parents at No. 5.  Here is one.  Theodore Hook’s famous Berners Street hoax had lately made such exploits very catching among schoolboys—­and in my Charterhouse days it was repeated by “Punsonby & Co.” at my father’s town-house.  On a certain Saturday when I had my weekly holiday