chapter of the HIGH WOODS that is written, a chapter and a
bit, some sixteen pages, really very fetching, but what do
you wish? the story is so wilful, so steep, so silly - it's a
hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never did a better
piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily
TRUE; it's sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence.
What am I to do? Lose this little gem - for I'll be bold,
and that's what I think it - or go on with the rest, which I
don't believe in, and don't like, and which can never make
aught but a silly yarn? Make another end to it? Ah, yes,
but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I
never use an effect, when I can help it, unless it prepares
the effects that are to follow; that's what a story consists
in. To make another end, that is to make the beginning all
wrong. The denouement of a long story is nothing; it is just
a 'full close,' which you may approach and accompany as you
please - it is a coda, not an essential member in the rhythm;
but the body and end of a short story is bone of the bone and
blood of the blood of the beginning. Well, I shall end by
finishing it against my judgment; that fragment is my
Delilah. Golly, it's good. I am not shining by modesty; but
I do just love the colour and movement of that piece so far
as it goes.

I was surprised to hear of your fishing. And you saw the
'Pharos,' thrice fortunate man; I wish I dared go home, I
would ask the Commissioners to take me round for old sake's
sake, and see all my family pictures once more from the Mull
of Galloway to Unst. However, all is arranged for our
meeting in Ceylon, except the date and the blooming pounds.