So much for you.

As for the boys--poor, fatherless creatures!--it is very hard that they should be so punished for no fault of their own; and my wife, who, though strict, is a good-hearted woman, is ready and willing to do what I wish about them.
You say the eldest is near sixteen and well come on in his studies.

I can get him a very good thing in a light genteel way.

My wife's brother, Mr.Christopher Plaskwith, is a bookseller and stationer with pretty practice, in R----.

He is a clever man, and has a newspaper, which he kindly sends me every week; and, though it is not my county, it has some very sensible views and is often noticed in the London papers, as 'our provincial contemporary.'-- Mr.Plaskwith owes me some money, which I advanced him when he set up the paper; and he has several times most honestly offered to pay me, in shares in the said paper.