'I hate to be tantalized in such a way [referring to erratic correspondence]. - It is like being condemned to eat green pease, one by one, with a tooth-pick, a method much recommended, for the economization of human pleasures, by Count Rumford. Did you ever meet with the passage? If the goods of life are to be thus scantily doled out to me, I had rather philosophically make up my mind to do without them'.