except that the scene is down opposite my balcony as I think and
smoke, and it is a blur on one of the most beautiful harbour views in
the world.


I had been working hard all day, mending the fence, putting up a
fowl-house and some lattice work and wire netting, and limewashing and
painting. Labours of love. I'd rather build a fowl-house than a
"pome" or story, any day. And when finished--the fowl-house, I
mean--I sit and contemplate my handiwork with pure and unadulterated
joy. And I take a candle out several times, after dark, to look at it
again. I never got such pleasure out of rhyme, story, or first-class
London Academy notice. I find it difficult to drag myself from the
fowl-house, or whatever it is, to meals, and harder to this work, and
I lie awake planning next day's work until I fall asleep in the sleep
of utter happy weariness. And I'm up and at it, before washing, at
daylight. But I was a carpenter and housepainter first.

Well, it had been a long, close day, and I was very dirty and tired,
but with the energy and restlessness of healthy, happy tiredness when
work is unfinished. But I was out of two-inch nails, and the shops
were shut.

Then it struck me to start up the copper and have a real warm bath
after my own heart and ideas. The bathroom is outside, next the
wash-house and copper. There were plenty of splinters and ends of
softwood that were mine by right of purchase and labour. My landlady
is, and always has been, sensitive on the subject of firewood. She'll
buy anything else to make the house comfortable and beautiful. She
has been known to buy a piano for one of her nieces and burn rubbish