I must thank you, most heartily and cordially, for your kind note
relative to poor Overs. I can't tell you how glad I am to know that he
thoroughly deserves such kindness.
What a good fellow Elliotson is. He kept him in his room a whole hour,
and has gone into his case as if he were Prince Albert; laying down all
manner of elaborate projects and determining to leave his friend Wood in
town when he himself goes away, on purpose to attend to him. Then he
writes me four sides of paper about the man, and says he can't go back
to his old work, for that requires muscular exertion (and muscular
exertion he mustn't make), what are we to do with him? He says: "Here's
five pounds for the present."
I declare before God that I could almost bear the Jones's for five years
out of the pleasure I feel in knowing such things, and when I think that
every dirty speck upon the fair face of the Almighty's creation, who
writes in a filthy, beastly newspaper; every rotten-hearted pander who
has been beaten, kicked, and rolled in the kennel, yet struts it in the
editorial "We," once a week; every vagabond that an honest man's gorge
must rise at; every live emetic in that noxious drug-shop the press, can
have his fling at such men and call them knaves and fools and thieves, I
grow so vicious that, with bearing hard upon my pen, I break the nib
down, and, with keeping my teeth set, make my jaws ache.
I have put myself out of sorts for the day, and shall go and walk,
unless the direction of this sets me up again. On second thoughts I
think it will.
Always, my dear Macready,
Your faithful Friend.
[Sidenote: Mr. George Cattermole.]