Letter to say "Coming Home at Christmas"
"The following letter was actually written by an Usher of a School, as a model for a young gentleman to inform his parents that he should be home at the Christmas Vacation.
It may well match with the pedagogue's well known love letter in "Peregerine Pickle".
"It is impossible to verbally declare the sublimity of satisfaction which I experience in the fond anticipation of passing that period of temporal abstraction from scholastic attention ordinarily cognominated the Vacation, or, as marking the diurnal sanctimonious employment usually directed, emphatically appellated holidays; therefore in simple and humble dictates I inform you, that the recess is fixed for the 23rd of the present duo-decimal division of the Annual Solar Revolutions: then shall I hope to experience all those domiciliary delectations usually attendant on that periodical festivity, conjuncated with the hilarities of those with whom I am enfraternally connected. Then those viands vaporially affecting our olfactory organs with their salubrious effluvia and our stomachs with their invigorating influence will be abundantly devoured, whether consisting of terrefacted or bulliated quadrupedal carmous substance, the more delicate fibres of the Volant aerial inhabitants, or the submarine piscatory residents - concluding with those heterogeneous compositions called puddings, aided by the exhilarating effects of vinous libations!"
(from the Kentish Gazette, Friday February 12 1802 p.3 col.3)
