text:  He tells his friend that he will endeavour to answer his letter in good-humour "though every thing around " he says "conspires to excite in him a contrary disposition--the melancholy gloom of the day the whistling winds and the hoarse rumbling of the swollen Liffey with a flood which even where I write lays close siege to our own street not permitting any to go in or out to supply us with the necessaries of life