esteem, without, my dear Sir, taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own behalf, and, I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the inhabitants of Port Middlebay, for the gratification of which you are the ministering agent. “Go on, my dear Sir! You are not unknown here, you are not unappreciated. Though ‘remote,’ we are neither ‘unfriended,’ ‘melancholy,’ nor (I may add) ‘slow.’ Go on, my dear Sir, in your eagle course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction! “Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the globe, will ever be found, while it has light and life,
I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper, that Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that journal. There was another letter from him in the same paper, touching a bridge; there was an advertisement of a collection of similar letters by him, to be shortly republished, in a neat volume, “with considerable additions”; and, unless I am very much mistaken, the leading article was his also.
We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr. Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his stay—which, I think, was something less than a month—and his sister and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more, on earth.
But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.