Arthur Dixon letters

I shall cut down the trouble for you as much as possible and beg you to beleive [sic] that I shall be most happy if you will only tell me you are well & so too, and you may simply as matter of business acknowlege [sic] the receipt of this & I will be easy imagining the rest. – Once indeed (and last Sunday morning) your trees at Keswick called to me & told me they had something to tell me of my absent friend, so I walked over – but they looked so green & their bright leaves shook in the sunny breeze so joyously & they only told me you were away, & that looking the while as if in their freshening circulation they had felt such pride they chose to mock my loneliness. – Not being in prime order the walk was too much for me, & exhausted me, e'ensomuch that I lay down after dinner & rose no more until the business of Monday called me, enervate to go through a day. I have opened & shut up your room daily at nine, like entering a recently opened apartment in old Pompeii. Each thing where you left it, all even to your footsteps untouched, but its master? where is he? & Echo says where? –
It proved the worst Horticultural day we have ever known, raining in torrents all the while.
I am selfish indeed to think of my temporary bereavement (particularly if it conduces to the happiness or enjoyment of the absent) while four families here in Norwich have each been robbed of a strong young member by Drowning. Three fine young men of a Party left their