Letter LVI

Dear share of the world, what a wonderful large helping of it you are to
me! I alter Portia's complaint and swear that "my little body is
bursting with this great world." And now it is written and I look at it,
it seems a Budge and Toddy sort of complaint. I do thank Heaven that the
Godhead who rules in it for us does not forbid the recognition of the
ludicrous! C---- was telling me how long ago, in her own dull Protestant
household, she heard a riddle propounded by some indiscreet soul who did
not understand the prudish piety which reigned there: and saw such
shocked eyes opening all round on the sound of it. "What is it," was
asked, "that a common man can see every day but that God never sees?"
"His equal" is the correct answer: but even so demure and proper a
support to thistly theology was to the ears that heard it as the hand of
Uzzah stretched out intrusively and deserving to be smitten. As for
C----, a twinkle of wickedness seized her, she hazarded "A joke" to be
the true answer, and was ordered into banishment by the head of that
God-fearing household for having so successfully diagnosed the family
skeleton.

As for skeletons, why your letter makes me so happy is that the one
which has been rubbing its ribs against you for so long seems to have
given itself a day off, or crumbled to dissolution. And you are yourself
again, as you have not been for many a long day. I suppose there has
been thunder, and the air is cleared: and I am not to know any of that
side of your discomforts?