From Thomas Archer Hirst   6th September¹

M^r Thorp’s | Badsworth, | ^nr Pontefract. | 6^th September

My dear Tyndall –

I am here among the Farmers, at their Harvest Time, and a gladdening sight I find it. They all look so active and joyful that it infects me too & I seize a fork and work away with spirit. No doubt there is as much Poetry in Long Chimnies and Smoke as in these green Fields and Stoops of Corn, but it is something deeper than mere custom that hides the one & makes the other so apparent and pleasing. I wonder what it is. I have stipulated however to have my mornings to myself, on pain of damnation to all intruders, as I tell them I am composing sermons. I shall stop here until Wednesday next² then spend Thursday and Friday in Halifax packing up, and if all be well start for Lancashire on Saturday. We have all to get drunk on Friday night at Smiths³ & then I have done with Halifax. I shall leave my luggage I think with Ginty until we return from Over Darwen. Which way must I come to find you? or is it necessary to come there at all, or will you be leaving before? Write to me here by return, as your answer may alter my present intentions

Yours as ever – | T.A. Hirst

D^r Tyndall | Spring Bank, Over Darwen, Lancs.⁴

RI MS JT/1/H/154