any touch of the satirical, that it was only natural that I should do
so. 

The first of my two rules, heartily approved by you, let me add, is that
I should not mention you in my autobiography.--We both deem it foolish
as well as unseemly to violate in print the freemasonry of marriage.--
The second, not unlike the first, is not to write about living people.
And here am I hard at it in both cases! 

Yet, after all, I have kept to my resolve in the spirit, if not in the
letter:--and this though it has cost me some very good "copy,"--copy,
too, which would have afforded me the pleasantest of memories.  There are
things seen by us together which I much regret to leave unchronicled,
but these must wait for another occasion.  Many of them are quite
suitable to be recorded in one's lifetime.  For example, I should dearly
like to set forth our ride from Jerusalem to Damascus, together with
some circumstances, as an old-fashioned traveller might have said,
concerning the Garden of the Jews at Jahoni, and the strange and
beautiful creature we found therein.