My miscellaneous correspondence had accumulated so much that it took me pretty much all my daylight to prepare replies. I had one or two visits, the most curious of which was that of Mr C M Eustis, who is vehemently in favor of a different plan of laying a telegraph cable from that adopted by the organized company. The secret came out that he was connected with a differently constructed cable covered with gutta percha prepared by his trading house. I promised to read his papers. How much of this kind of thing any person connected with public affairs is compelled to attend to. And what skill and tact are required to pick out the valuable from the worthless. I received from my American acquaintance who paid me another visit in the evening several copies of a rebel address to teh English people which has been extensively circulated in the country. It is a compound of trick, falsehood and passion quite characteristic of the source from which it comes. Its tone confirms the impressions I have lately received from other quarters of the great exhaustion of the rebels. My new acquaintance revealed to me tonight what I expected to hear, and that is, that he wanted money. He had applied to Maury for some, but he pleaded poverty. As yet he has not given me much information, but I gave him some money, and he promised to get some communication from Maury of the outfit going on at Liverpool. I do not think he is much in their confidence, or that he has much real vigor. Still he may be useful just at this crisis. Finished reading Mr Dickens’s Christmas Story of Somebody’s Luggage, which is quite feeble as a whole. He appears to have exhausted this vein.