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DOCUMENTS

Letter to Miss Cay  23 March 1852
 
 
 
 
 
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.