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June 11, 1887. This immense paper is a great atrocity, but it can’t be helped; I dare say it is, in fact, note paper, but it.has been drawn out by the heat.

I cannot think what possesses me to write to you at this hour—precisely half-past twelve—when the miserable attempt at breakfast, made at nine, has ceased to give the slightest support, and when, from exhaustion and heat, and the conviction that luncheon will never come, I feel utterly desperate. Too weak to read, and very weak indeed to think of writing to you. Breakfast is a remarkably bad meal in this country. I wish you could see the bilious despondency with which, one after another, we all look at it; not but what there is a great choice of evils—tea and chocolate and eggs in all shapes; and meat, fish, and pine-apples, and mango fruits, and mango-fool, instead of gooseberry-fool. But it is all in vain; it is too much trouble to eat at that hour, and sundry weak voices saying,