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Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre   159


Do they ticket the houses as cabinet curiosities? It is certainly novel and decidedly literary. I suppose that Lucy and James have already arrived, what with them and my two uncles, the Galton family will inundate the place, and if the ordinary appetite that accompanies the several branches of the family be present at Scarboro' it will give a very satisfactory interpretation of the N.g. ticketing. Whewell is undoubtedly under the guardianship of Hymen, though an oyster may be affected by love, a Whewell can't, for he has (I understand) been so involved in the metaphysical line that he looks on the approaching event with the most philosophical indifference. In 3 weeks Keswick is to be turned topsy-turvy with amusements. Inprimis a 4-oared race in which your humble servant is to pull, as we get up a boat for the honour of Cambridge. (The names of the crew are Atkinson, Strickland, Young, Galton and Cooper steersman) £12 prize. We really shall have a very fair chance, for though the Keswick boatmen are trained to pulling from their sash and petticoat age yet they are more in the cart horse line, whilst the description that I heard given of our crew was that they are "intensely plucky." We have great amusement here in scrambling about. Mathison is a capital walker but not a dab at climbing, consequently he occasionally sticks amongst the rocks like a saint in a niche and immovable without a miracle. We get on capitally at Browtop. The order of the day is-Breakfast finished as the clock strikes 9. Reading till 1 or 12. Lunch, walk till 5, dine and chat till 8, Read till 10, tea to 102, Read to 11 or 12.

When a long walk is taken we eschew dinner put our leathern whisky flasks in our pockets, which I am convinced is the true interpretation of "seven leagued boots," and walk from 1 to 8 or 9. We certainly do great things in the walking line instead of "manage-ing nos forces" after the Swiss regime. We scamper up the hills and somehow or other don't get tired. To-day I ascended more than 1 of the height of Skiddaw (driven back by mist) in 35 minutes, about 2200 feet, this was in Sunday costume and without puggyfying to any extent.

DEAR BESSY. How's the bathing? and how are Emma's freckles? The amount of sunshine here is by no means dangerous to beauty as the sun has generally a mass of mist rather thicker than Skiddaw is high to shine through. It has been miserably cold so that I read with a pea-coat on and with my feet on the fire hob. In your letter in a quotation from Aunt Hubert a word occurred "odm...ts." I have looked in Johnson's Dictionary but can find nothing corresponding, to it, so I presume that it must have been coined since his time.

Again, there was a passage in your letter ending with 4 notes of admiration combined. This is an excess.

Thirdly, I should recommend a more refined choice of phrases than such as the " weather taking up " and others of a similar nature. You state " The air is delightful, and a beautiful walk along the cliff." I am not aetherial enough to enter into your delights-(I must bully you). How has Lucy's bazaar gone off? Please write oftener. Tell me what you had for dinner if you can think of nothing else, but do write.

Good-bye,

your affect. Brother,

FRAS. GALTON.


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