power and influence? In less than a century we
should be as the Hottentots. We should be driven out before the
advance of more energetic races, just as the Hottentots; who once
possessed Southern Europe and Egypt, have been forced back into the
African wilderness, where they live a life that is content with the
gratification of the most primitive, the most bestial, wants. It is no
excuse to say that the action of one man can have but little influence
upon the trend of life in a whole nation. The merest unit in the sum,
the cipher even, has power to change the total. The strength of wisdom
in the majority of a nation may be more than sufficient to-day to
counteract the folly of the unit; but there is always the chance that
the folly of the individual may in time prevail against the experience
of the wise, and pervert the nation. At all events, we ought to
consider such possibilities before we hold ourselves free to do as we
please in contempt of general custom.

'Do not be angry with me when I say that to me your flight from London
appears only an illustration of that cowardice about life which is so
common to-day. Men are very much afraid of life to-day; afraid of its
responsibilities and duties; afraid of marriage and the burden of
children; and not alone for the old are there fears in the way, but
even the young men faint and grow weary.

'I can understand Stevenson flying to the South Seas; it was part of
his prolonged duel with death. But his heart was in the Highlands, and
could he have chosen, his feet would have trodden to old age the grey
streets of Edinburgh. Your flight is altogether different. You have
no real excuse in ill-health. You have simply fallen sick with a
distaste for cities. You have had a bad dream, and you are frightened.
I love you still; I count you friend still; but I cannot call you brave.

'O my friend, if I have said anything that sounds unfriendly, do not
believe it of me; do not doubt that I love you. I think I should not
have written thus but that in your last letter you expressed pity for
me, and that stung me, I confess. And so I retort, you see, by pitying
you, which is not admirable in me. Therefore let me say, if you care
still to please me, do not, in any further letters you may write, ever
express the least pity for me. Quite honestly I say I do not need
pity, for I am perfectly happy. In giving all the time and money I can
spare to the poor in Lucraft's Row, I