3-134 (Text)

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"JOHNSON'S HOTEL, CASTLEREAGH STREET, Nov. 18th, 1857." 
"MY DARLING ADA,
There is to be a call of the House this evening, when all members not answering to their names are liable to fine, still worse, to forfeiture of their seats. The Land Bill, the great measure of the session, is to come on to-night, yet Mr. Murray, from whom so much is expected, has not yet arrived. 
"It is really too bad. I cannot express to you, beloved, how utterly sick and tired I am of being here. Sydney is to me, a public man with abundance of society, the 'miserable hole' I once, to my burning indignation, heard some one else call it. If I must feel it so, how must others less pleasantly situated regard it? I am keeping very quiet in every way, and, indeed, with the exception of my attendance at the House, intend almost to bury myself in my room here at Johnson's. I shall not let anybody, not even Dalley, know of my whereabouts, but make all appointments for and give all interviews at stated hours at the Sydney Club. On Monday evening next I lecture at the School of Arts on the Poems and Writings of Charles Harpur. The ordinary night for lecturing at that institution is Tuesday, but as next Tuesday evening is set apart for the delivery of a lecture by the Governor-General, the Committee, to mark their sense 'of the honour done the institution by the Member for Argyle,' have fixed a special night, so as not to keep me waiting till the next week. I do not intend staying here more than ten days, or a fortnight at furthest. If the Ministry - and I hope to heaven they will - withdraw the Land Bill this afternoon, my delay will not be longer than a week. Are you better, dear, than when I left? God bless you, beloved, and my child, the dearest creature to me on earth. Often in hours when the cloud and the storm are black and terrible about my soul, when she whom De Quincey called 'Our Lady of Darkness' has laid her awful hand upon my heart, the pure thoughts of May and you come like a pair of white doves athwart the gloom and reconcile me to all things. We shall be happy yet, my wife. 
"Your own, 
"D. H. DENIEHY."