The Letters of Laurence Sterne to His Most Intimate Friends

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER LXXIV To J[ohn] H[al[ S[tevenon], Esq. Toulouse, August 12, 1762. My Dear H[all], ? By the time you have got to the end of this long letter you will perceive that I have not been able to answer your last 'till now ? I have had the intention of doing it almost as often as my prayers in my head ? 'tis thus we use our best friends ? what an infamous story is that you have told me!?After some little remarks on it the rest of my letter will go on like silk. is a goodnatured old easy fool and has been deceived by the most artful of her sex, and she must have abundance of impudence and char- latanery to have carried on such a farce. I pity the old man for being taken in for so much money ? a man of sense I should have laughed at ? My wife saw her when in town, and she had not the appearance of poverty, but when she wants to melt heart, she puts her gold watch and diamond rings in her drawer. ? But he might have been aware of her. I could nothave been mistaken in her character ? and 'tis odd she should talk of her wealth to one, and tell another the reverse ? so good night to her ? About a week or ten days before my wife arrived at Paris I had the same accident I had at Cambridge, of breaking a vessel in my lungs. It happen'd in the night, and I bled the bed full, and finding in the morning I was likely to bleed to death, I sent immediately for a surgeon to bleed me at both arms ? this saved me, and with lying speechless three days, I recovered upon my back in bed; the breach healed, and in a week after I got out ? This with my weakness and hurrying about made me think it high time to haste to Toulouse. ? We have had four months of such heats that the oldest Frenchman never remembers the like?'twas as hot as Nebucluidnez- zar's oven, and never has relaxed one hour...