intelligible. I took the plan of saying everything at least
twice in a different form of words, so that if the one
escaped my hearers, the other might be seized. One white man
came with his wife, and was kept rigorously on the front
verandah below! You see what a sea of troubles this is like
to prove; but it is the only chance - and when it blows up,
it must blow up! I have no more hope in anything than a dead
frog; I go into everything with a composed despair, and don't
mind - just as I always go to sea with the conviction I am to
be drowned, and like it before all other pleasures. But you
should have seen the return voyage, when nineteen horses had
to be found in the dark, and nineteen bridles, all in a
drench of rain, and the club, just constituted as such,
sailed away in the wet, under a cloudy moon like a bad
shilling, and to descend a road through the forest that was
at that moment the image of a respectable mountain brook. My
wife, who is president WITH POWER TO EXPEL, had to begin her
functions. . . .


25TH MARCH.


Heaven knows what day it is, but I am ashamed, all the more
as your letter from Bournemouth of all places - poor old
Bournemouth! - is to hand, and contains a statement of
pleasure in my letters which I wish I could have rewarded
with a long one. What has gone on? A vast of affairs, of a
mingled, strenuous, inconclusive, desultory character; much
waste of time, much riding to and fro, and little transacted