stable - and my wife with ear-ache! Well, well, this
morning, we had word from Apia; a hurricane was looked for,
the ships were to leave the bay by 10 A.M.; it is now 3.30,
and the flagship is still a fixture, and the wind round in
the blessed east, so I suppose the danger is over. But
heaven is still laden; the day dim, with frequent rattling
bucketfuls of rain; and just this moment (as I write) a
squall went overhead, scarce striking us, with that singular,
solemn noise of its passage, which is to me dreadful. I have
always feared the sound of wind beyond everything. In my
hell it would always blow a gale.

I have been all day correcting proofs, and making out a new
plan for our house. The other was too dear to be built now,
and it was a hard task to make a smaller house that would
suffice for the present, and not be a mere waste of money in
the future. I believe I have succeeded; I have taken care of
my study anyway.

Two favours I want to ask of you. First, I wish you to get
'Pioneering in New Guinea,' by J. Chalmers. It's a
missionary book, and has less pretensions to be literature
than Spurgeon's sermons. Yet I think even through that, you
will see some of the traits of the hero that wrote it; a man
that took me fairly by storm for the most attractive, simple,
brave, and interesting man in the whole Pacific. He is away
now to go up the Fly River; a desperate venture, it is
thought; he is quite a Livingstone card.

Second, try and keep yourself free next winter; and if my