I had yours of the 25th of Oct 1770 some 
time in the last week, which the gallant Hendrick was so kind as to bring
to me himself. He did find me above ground but very near as cold as if I 
had been under it  We have had a most severe Frost & I thought we 
had been in for it as we were 31 years ago. It is now going away, or 
making us believe so. --  I have suffered inexpressible cold, for I find Blood 
is not so hot at 77 as it is at 25, my Room  is N. East the reverse of 
that sweet room you did me the honour & pleasure to let me see you in 
at St. James.  The cursed building here makes an Angle with the window, the 
roaring wind comes pouring against it, & as he can't blow thro' a brick wall 
he will force himself in tho  I have paper'd with paste and barricaded with 
putty, & surrounded myself with Blankets & Screens, I can do no more, but 
eat gingerbread & drink Geneva with my old Pensioners, & that does 
not agree with my complaints, (tho' at present I thank a good god I have 
none or very small & few) Arimanis pushes hard at my glass & I believe 
wriggles his damn'd tartarian nitrous Spicula through, in so much that I 
begin to believe what Sr Isaac is reported to have said is true, that the parts of 
glass, , are as far distant from one another as three 
Tennis Balls are, one at the N. Pole, another at the Equator, & the third 
at the S. Pole.  I hear the poor girls about the Strand & Convent Garden 
run about Shivering & wrinkled up like a John Apple and if you will 
but give 'em a few round codils you may do what you will with em. 
& I told a Person tother day who was deploring the sinfullness of this 
wicked world & the difficulty of reforming it, that I thought it would be 
right to try his skill upon himelf, for there he might succeed if he 
wou'd, & says I,  I'll give you one piece of advice in relation to those 
poor Devils half starv'd with Hunger  & cold, don't be such a fool as to 
pretend to frighten, 'em with Hell fire in the midst of such a frost, but 
keep that terrour till the Sun is in Leo, or you are sure they favor a 
chacede Pisse or an inflamed Vagina. Tell em youll strip em Stark naked 
as you & that lewd Dag M---M did Hanna, Fenton at the Fountain Tavern 
in Catherine Street, & touse their naked bums into the coldest bath 
of Nova Zembla. Its a maxim as old as Hippocrates, that  
, and that they will be all so icified that nothing 
but mercury, salivation or a red Hot Poker will open their pores and 
obstructions & set their fluids a running again. 

I was glad to see the noble Captain look so hearty & well and the 
more so as he has been so polite as to say he owes em to me, which I had 
quite forgot, and I never wish to cure a man but once he also gave 
me a signal pleasure with his account of your complaints being greatly 
diminished at last.  The misfortune, ( if it has any Title to be call'd so) 
you complain of is a very common one.  If you are told that you are well 
when you are not so,  make the dogs prove it, & that will pay you for 
the insult, or if they brag of their being well, slip a couple of ounces of 
the Ipecacoanna Infusion down their throats, & tell em they lie. 

I have been told by wits & fools too that nothing was the matter with me 
when my Heart was jumping about like a chicken with the [head]