First, all your packet arrived: I have dipped into the Schumann
already with great pleasure. Surely, in what concerns us there is
a sweet little chirrup; the GOOD WORDS arrived in the morning just
when I needed it, and the famous notes that I had lost were
recovered also in the nick of time.

And now I am going to bother you with my affairs: premising,
first, that this is PRIVATE; second, that whatever I do the LIFE
shall be done first, and I am getting on with it well; and third,
that I do not quite know why I consult you, but something tells me
you will hear with fairness.

Here is my problem. The Curtin women are still miserable
prisoners; no one dare buy their farm of them, all the manhood of
England and the world stands aghast before a threat of murder. (1)
Now, my work can be done anywhere; hence I can take up without loss
a back-going Irish farm, and live on, though not (as I had
originally written) in it: First Reason. (2) If I should be
killed, there are a good many who would feel it: writers are so
much in the public eye, that a writer being murdered would attract
attention, throw a bull's-eye light upon this cowardly business:
Second Reason. (3) I am not unknown in the States, from which the
funds come that pay for these brutalities: to some faint extent,
my death (if I should be killed) would tell there: Third Reason.
(4) NOBODY ELSE IS TAKING UP THIS OBVIOUS AND CRYING DULY: Fourth
Reason. (5) I have a crazy health and may die at any moment, my
life is of no purchase in an insurance office, it is the less
account to husband it, and the business of husbanding a life is
dreary and demoralising: Fifth Reason.