received a despatch - and that he misreads it (so we fully
believe) to the effect that they are to have war ships at
command and can make their little war after all. If it be
so, and they do it, it will be the meanest wanton slaughter
of poor men for the salaries of two white failures. But what
was his errand with me? Perhaps to warn me that unless I
behave he now hopes to be able to pack me off in the CURACOA
when she comes.

I have celebrated my holiday from SAMOA by a plunge at the
beginning of THE YOUNG CHEVALIER. I am afraid my touch is a
little broad in a love story; I can't mean one thing and
write another. As for women, I am no more in any fear of
them; I can do a sort all right; age makes me less afraid of
a petticoat, but I am a little in fear of grossness.
However, this David Balfour's love affair, that's all right -
might be read out to a mothers' meeting - or a daughters'
meeting. The difficulty in a love yarn, which dwells at all
on love, is the dwelling on one string; it is manifold, I
grant, but the root fact is there unchanged, and the
sentiment being very intense, and already very much handled
in letters, positively calls for a little pawing and gracing.
With a writer of my prosaic literalness and pertinency of
point of view, this all shoves toward grossness - positively
even towards the far more damnable CLOSENESS. This has kept
me off the sentiment hitherto, and now I am to try: Lord! Of
course Meredith can do it, and so could Shakespeare; but with
all my romance, I am a realist and a prosaist, and a most
fanatical lover of plain physical sensations plainly and
expressly rendered; hence my perils. To do love in the same