It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written half-a-dozen answers at least. I began one, “How can I ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting impression”⁠—there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up. I began another, “Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is that a man should put an enemy into his mouth”⁠—that reminded me of Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note, in a six-syllable line, “Oh, do not remember”⁠—but that associated itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many attempts, I wrote, “My dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what could I say of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come at four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T. C. ” With this missive (which I was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon as it was out of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.