My dear Gulielmus
I am not surprised at Furniture &c coming to £27; though the papering will be a dead loss.— I enclose draft for £30, which must be backed by you.2 Try for discount.— A man of business like you will of course carefully keep receipts.— Please acknowledge receipt of draft.— You will now have £12 or £15 in hand, which I hope will last for some little time. But I well know the first term must be extra expensive.
Lizzie was perfectly delighted with your note & we all laughed heartily at it.—3 It set her off twittering in first-rate style.
We are all rather extra well & jolly here, & the Boys are going to have 5s. worth of fireworks & a bon-fire.—4 Tell us whether you attend the discussions at Union Club: shall you ever get up pluck to speak? I hope you may. I heard a funny & authentic story at Moor Park of a very nervous man, who knew he shd. have to return thanks at a public dinner; so made a long speech & learnt it by heart; but when he got up he ⟨forgot⟩ to speak out & ⟨section excised⟩ action & gesticulations, which ought to have accompanied the speech: the audience were so good natured, that whenever he made much action, they cheered him; & he never found out that he had been quite silent for the whole quarter of an hour; & the next morning the non-speaker said to my friend that he ⟨ ⟩ had got through
Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2353,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on