I wish you both a merry New Year,
     Roast beef, minced pies, and good strong beer,
     And me a share of your good cheer,
     That I was there, or you were here;
     And you’re a little saucy dear.

Good-morrow again, dear sirrahs; one cannot rise for your play.—­At night.  I went this morning to visit Lady Kerry and Lord Shelburne; and they made me dine with them.  Sir Andrew Fountaine is better.  And now let us come and see what this saucy, dear letter of MD says.  Come out, letter, come out from between the sheets; here it is underneath, and it will not come out.  Come out again, I say:  so there.  Here it is.  What says Presto to me, pray? says it.  Come, and let me answer for you to your ladies.  Hold up your head then, like a good letter.  There.  Pray, how have you got up with Presto, Madam Stella?  You write your eighth when you receive mine:  now I write my twelfth when I receive your eighth.  Do not you allow for what are upon the road, simpleton?  What say you to that?  And so you kept Presto’s little birthday, I warrant:  would to God I had been at the health rather than here, where I have no manner of pleasure, nothing but eternal business upon my hands.  I shall grow wise in time; but no more of that:  only I say Amen with my heart and vitals, that we may never be asunder again ten days together while poor Presto lives. -------- ------------------------------------------------ I can’t be merry so near any splenetic talk; so I made that long line, and now all’s well again.  Yes, you are a pretending slut, indeed, with your fourth and fifth in the margin, and your journal, and everything.  Wind—­we saw no wind here, nothing at all extraordinary at any time.  We had it once when you had it not.  But an old saying and a true: 

     “I hate all wind,
      Before and behind,
      From cheeks with eyes,
      Or from blind.——­”

Your chimney fall down!  God preserve you.  I suppose you only mean a brick or two:  but that’s a d—­ned lie of your chimney being carried to the next house with the wind.  Don’t put such things upon us; those matters will not pass here:  keep a little to possibilities.  My Lord Hertford[12] would have been ashamed of such a stretch.  You should take care of what company you converse with:  when one gets that faculty, ’tis hard to break one’s self of it.  Jemmy Leigh talks of going over; but quando?  I do not know when he will go.  Oh, now you have had my ninth, now you are come up with me; marry come up with you, indeed.  I know all that business of Lady S——.[13] Will nobody cut that D—­y’s throat?  Five hundred pounds do you call poor pay for living three months the life of a king?  They say she died with grief, partly, being forced to appear as a witness in court about some squabble among their servants.—­The Bishop of Clogher showed you a pamphlet.[14] Well, but you must not give your mind to believe those things;