TO MISS CAY.
8 King's Parade, 23d March 1852.
I received yours (of the 18th I suppose) on Saturday,
and began to muse
on the difference of our modes of life: your sickness—my
health;
your kind dealings with neighbours—our utter independence of each
other;
you visit without seeing people—we see without
visiting
each other; you hear all about people's families and domestic
concerns—we
do not, but we know exactly how everybody is up in his different
subjects,
and what are his favourite pursuits for the time.
The Little-go is now going on, so I am taking my
Easter vacation at
this time. I do nothing but the papers in the Senate-house,
and then spend the day in walks and company, reading books of a
pleasant
but not too light kind, lest I should be disgusted with
recreation.
I find myself quite at grass, and am sure that in 10
days I will be
reading again as if I had been rusticated for a year.
I never did such a feat as get up at 5 in the morning.
I get up at 6.30
for chapel in winter, and read in the daytime, but I have
now
begun my summer practice of sleeping in the mornings and reading at
night,
save when I get up on a fine day to take a walk in the
morning,
which makes me idle all day, and is sometimes agreeable.
I met old Isaac Taylor in his son's rooms some time
ago. He began by
speaking of the weather in a serious way, and went on to
his
Manchester concerns,—effective motives to work, actual methods adopted,
and so got into the merits of socialism, joint-stock
workmen's
associations, and so forth, appearing all the while to say
nothing,
but quietly feed on the wisdom of the undergrads., as they enounced
their
opinions.