no right to dally; if it is to help, it must come soon. In
two months from now it shall be done, and should be published
in the course of March. I propose Cassell gets it. I am
going to call it 'A Footnote to History: Eight Years of
Trouble in Samoa,' I believe. I recoil from serious names;
they seem so much too pretentious for a pamphlet. It will be
about the size of TREASURE ISLAND, I believe. Of course, as
you now know, my case of conscience cleared itself off, and I
began my intervention directly to one of the parties. The
other, the Chief Justice, I am to inform of my book the first
occasion. God knows if the book will do any good - or harm;
but I judge it right to try. There is one man's life
certainly involved; and it may be all our lives. I must not
stand and slouch, but do my best as best I can. But you may
conceive the difficulty of a history extending to the present
week, at least, and where almost all the actors upon all
sides are of my personal acquaintance. The only way is to
judge slowly, and write boldly, and leave the issue to fate.
. . . I am far indeed from wishing to confine myself to
creative work; that is a loss, the other repairs; the one
chance for a man, and, above all, for one who grows elderly,
ahem, is to vary drainage and repair. That is the one thing
I understand - the cultivation of the shallow SOLUM of my
brain. But I would rather, from soon on, be released from
the obligation to write. In five or six years this
plantation - suppose it and us still to exist - should pretty
well support us and pay wages; not before, and already the
six years seem long to me. If literature were but a pastime!

I have interrupted myself to write the necessary notification