Thou, my Alan, wilt treat as timidity this passive acquiescence, which has sunk down on me like a benumbing torpor; but if thou hast remembered by what visions my couch was haunted, and dost but think of the probability that I am in the vicinity, perhaps under the same roof with G.M., thou wilt acknowledge that other feelings than pusillanimity have tended in some degree to reconcile me to my fate.
Still I own it is unmanly to submit with patience to this oppressive confinement.

My heart rises against it, especially when I sit down to record my sufferings in this journal, and I am determined, as the first step to my deliverance, to have my letters sent to the post-house.

---- I am disappointed.

When the girl Dorcas, upon whom I had fixed for a messenger, heard me talk of sending a letter, she willingly offered her services, and received the crown which I gave her (for my purse had not taken flight with the more valuable contents of my pocket-book) with a smile which showed her whole set of white teeth.
But when, with the purpose of gaining some intelligence respecting my present place of abode, I asked to which post-town she was to send or carry the letter, a stolid 'ANAN' showed me she was either ignorant of the nature of a post-office, or that, for the present, she chose to seem so.--'Simpleton!' I said, with some sharpness.
'O Lord, sir!' answered the girl, turning pale, which they always do when I show any sparks of anger, 'Don't put yourself in a passion--I'll put the letter in the post.
'What! and not know the name of the post-town ?' said I, out of patience.
'How on earth do you propose to manage that ?' 'La you there, good master.

What need you frighten a poor girl that is no schollard, bating what she learned at the Charity School of Saint Bees ?' 'Is Saint Bees far from this place, Dorcas?
Do you send your letters there ?' said I, in a manner as insinuating, and yet careless, as I could assume.
'Saint Bees! La, who but a madman--begging your honour's pardon--it's a matter of twenty years since fader lived at Saint Bees, which is twenty, or forty, or I dunna know not how many miles from this part, to the West, on the coast side; and I would not have left Saint Bees, but that fader'-- 'Oh, the devil take your father!' replied I.
To which she answered, 'Nay, but thof your honour be a little how-come-so, you shouldn't damn folk's faders; and I won't stand to it, for one.' 'Oh, I beg you a thousand pardons--I wish your father no ill in the world--he was a very honest man in his way.' 'WAS an honest man!' she exclaimed; for the Cumbrians are, it would seem, like their neighbours the Scotch, ticklish on the point of ancestry,--'He IS a very honest man as ever led nag with halter on head to Staneshaw Bank Fair.