I only once
dined with anybody; at the club with Wise; worked all morning
- a terrible dead pull; a month only produced the imperfect
embryos of two chapters; lunched in the boarding-house,
played on my pipe; went out and did some of my messages;
dined at a French restaurant, and returned to play draughts,
whist, or Van John with my family. This makes a cheery life
after Samoa; but it isn't what you call burning the candle at
both ends, is it? (It appears to me not one word of this
letter will be legible by the time I am done with it, this
dreadful ink rubs off.) I have a strange kind of novel under
construction; it begins about 1660 and ends 1830, or perhaps
I may continue it to 1875 or so, with another life. One,
two, three, four, five, six generations, perhaps seven,
figure therein; two of my old stories, 'Delafield' and
'Shovel,' are incorporated; it is to be told in the third
person, with some of the brevity of history, some of the
detail of romance. THE SHOVELS OF NEWTON FRENCH will be the
name. The idea is an old one; it was brought to birth by an
accident; a friend in the islands who picked up F.
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