Can you let me have an early copy of the _American Notes_ so that I
may review it in the _New Monthly_? Is it really likely to be ready
as advertised? I aim this at Devonshire Place, supposing you to be
returned, for with these winds 'tis no fit time for the coast. But
your bones are not so weather unwise (for ignorance _is_ bliss) as
mine. I should have asked this by word of mouth in Devonshire Place,
but the weather has kept me indoors. It is no fiction that the
complaint, derived from Dutch malaria seven years ago, is revived by
Easterly winds. Otherwise I have been better than usual, and 'never
say die'. Don't forget about the Yankee Notes. I never had but one
American friend, and lost him through _a good crop of pears_. He paid
us a visit in England; whereupon in honour of him, a pear tree, which
had never borne fruit to speak of within memory of man, was loaded
with ninety dozen of brown somethings. Our gardener said they were
a _keeping_ sort, and would be good at Christmas; whereupon, as our
Jonathan was on the eve of sailing for the States, we sent him a few
dozens to dessert him on the voyage. Some he put at the bottom of a
trunk (he wrote to us) to take to America; but he could not have been
gone above a day or two, when all _our_ pears began to rot! _His_
would, of course, by sympathy, and I presume spoilt his linen or
clothes, for I have never heard of him since. Perhaps he thought I had
_done_ him on purpose, and for sartin the tree, my accomplice, never
bore any more pears, good or bad, after that supernatural crop.
Pray present my respects for me to Mrs. Dickens. How she must enjoy
being at home and discovering her children, after her Columbusing, and
only discovering America!