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        <title type="main">William Hone to Robert Childs, 4 June, 1831</title>
        <title type="sub">An Electronic Edition</title>
        <author>
          <name key="Hone, William, 1780-1842">William Hone</name>
        </author>
        <editor>
          <name xml:id="KG" key="Grimes, Kyle">Kyle Grimes</name>
        </editor>
      </titleStmt>
      <publicationStmt>
        <p>For publication in the Hone Correspondence section of the William Hone BioText,
          http://honearchive.org. The letter is published under a Creative Commons license, details
          of which are accessible from the BioText homepage.</p>
      </publicationStmt>
      <sourceDesc>
        <p>transcirbed from the original in the British Library, Add. MS 40120, ff. 353</p>
      </sourceDesc>
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      <change when="2019-06-05" who="#KG">edited and updated TEI; still needs
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      <div type="letter" n="1831-06-04">
        <head>
          William Hone to <ref type="person" target="whoswho.html#ChildsRobert">Robert
            Childs</ref>, <date when="1831-06-04">4 June, 1831</date>. <anchor xml:id="citation"
            /><note resp="#KG" place="foot">British Library, Add. MS 40120, ff. 353. <ref
              target="#citation">[return]</ref></note> &#8212; <ref type="tei-link"
                target="1831-06-04-toRobertChilds.xml"> -TEI- </ref>
        </head>
        <opener>
          <address>
            <addrLine>13 Gracechurch Street</addrLine>
          </address>
          <date>4 June 1831.</date>
        </opener>
        <p> In the name of sacred Phrenology, &amp; yourself, Mr. Robert Childs, and every thing
          else that is sacred and laughable, &amp; wonderful, to a poor half daft body like me, what
          can you assign to me as a reason--the reason is another thing--but I ask what will you
          give as a reason, you thief of the world and me, for taking off, and causing one to leave
          behind, &amp; yourself detaining, withholding, &amp; keeping, my head and ears, face and
          features, &amp; the appurtenances thereof &amp; thereto belonging or appertaining? answer
          me that, and get out of it as you can, if it is in your power, without forfeiting your
          honor, &amp; standing naked before me, as you would do if you got up in the morning in my
          presence, without your breeches, like a snake that has crawled through a bush &amp; left
          his skin behind him, &amp; works his way tenderly over the young green grass, reptile as
          he is, while its growing for the food of the innocent beasts that perish after the manner
          of yourself working among the harmless printing types, as they would be, if it was not for
          your changing them about into skimble skamble stuff, &amp; perplexing the heads of the
          people with knowledge and sorrow--knowledge today, &amp; sorrow tomorrow--totheration
          Botheration! I say, where's my head? Am I to go about everlastingly, as I have gone for
          the last two months, with people asking me where's <emph rend="underline">my</emph> head,
          &amp; they know <emph rend="underline">you've</emph> got it, &amp; I know you've got it,
          &amp; I have not got it myself, &amp; the craters laughing at me for a fool, as I am,
          &amp; you made me so, and I want to know why? What have you done with it? What did you
          want it for? What do you want it for? What are you <milestone unit="folio" n="353b"/>
          going to do with it? What right have you to it? Is not it my head, &amp; not yours? And is
          not your own enough for you? Have you no respect for the <emph rend="underline"
            >head-hitter</emph> of the "Year Book"? Don't you know you are only just outside of his
            <emph rend="underline">rapper</emph>, and if he gets you within, the better for him
          &amp; the worse for yourself, &amp; your brother perhaps? It is not Christmas yet, &amp;
          what care I for turkey, or Turks like you? And, for aught I know, my head may be stuck up
          at your door, for the pigs to look at, like the heads at the gate of the great Turk's
          palace upon poles. And there's the poor crreatures in Poland, half of them, perhaps, by
          this time, without <emph rend="underline">their</emph> heads--al taken off by barbarians,
          like you, with bumps of destructiveness--or blown away at the cannons mouth, as I may be,
          some day, in a hard winter, from the top of a stage-coach, going somewhere to increase my
          means of living, &amp; so meeting with my death. </p>
        <p> Now I have it!--I have it! May you not feel another bump, if you are not keeping my head
          till I'm dead! But I'll be up with you. I'll be down upon you--Down at Bungay will I be,
          as sure as my head's my own, &amp; I live to reach the place--or I'll bring an action in
            <unclear>[one word]</unclear>, or, file a bill of discovery &amp; get you into Chancery,
          &amp; recover my head--or get an order to have it referred to the master to take an
          account of the bumps, &amp; report the proceeds or an interlocutory judgment for the
          profits to be paid to the Accountant General, with interest, and I'll ruin you with
          costs--I'll proceed <emph rend="underline">Informer Pauperus</emph> -- make your brother a
          co-defendant, &amp; work at that same Treasury check he would not let me see in his
          breeches pocket, buttoned up, which he got out of our present finance ministers, &amp;
          could not have got from the others, for flabbergasting at the <emph rend="underline">Come
            at he</emph> for parliamentary printing--<emph rend="underline">that</emph> way your
          brother--why don't you get <emph rend="underline">his</emph> head?</p>

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