133
  22.  Saturday.  To Harper�s.  Got block.  Saw
Guernsey.  Story rejected, on the ground of the scene being laid
in England � may do for the paper.   Post Office.  Up town.  Pho-
nography at night.  Let me stick to it.  I�m heart sick of this
precarious pen-and-pencil life.      Three projects of mine, of
late, have been anticipated, and the labor spent on them lost.
1. A volume of Dicken�s uncollected sketches, from various sources.
An edition now publishing in London promises two.  2. A Compi-
lation of Jerrold�s �Wit & Wisdom,� with a prefaratory essay on
his genius & a memoir.  His son�s just produced a similar book.
3.  A Comprehensive Dictionary of Americanisms.  That I have
been working on of late, when I�m informed that there�s one just
completed.           I�m rather weary, but never say die.   Let�s
stick to Phonography.                      A letter from home to-day, from
my mother and Naomi.  Items of news in the latter, of the
Mitchell family, my cousins.  Annie � pretty Annie! whom I
used to kiss and have on my knee in dull Mary Street, during
our boy and girl days � has four children, in Australia.
With her husband, Sweetapple, and brother William, she went
to the diggings, lived in a tent &c � I hope with success.   What
a contrast to the days of her childhood.   Pretty Annie! on the
other side of the round world, �by the long wash of Australasian
seas� � may you be happy!   Poor William has been �down in
the world,� didn�t write to his mother for three years, then
went into business and got married to a �lady of title.� Ah Bill!
do you ever think now of our sleeping together in the attic at
Mary St, the moonlight coming in, and the lights of �Nash�s
Wine Vaults flaring opposite?
  There�s something very melancholy in these scattering abroad.