is
habit of gently biting my arm or shoulder every time I led him here or
there, he sealed his own fate; and now will have to continue living
with his tamely uninteresting master willy nilly. Lovable, kindly,
spirited beast that he is, I never could have afforded the purchase of
his like but for a slight flaw in his near foreleg, which in some way
spoils his action, from your horsey man's standpoint, and pleases me
greatly, because it brought the affectionate rascal within my modest
reach. I give him very little work, and rather too much food; but he
has to put up with a good deal of my society, and holds long converse
with me daily, I suppose because he knows no means of terminating an
interview until that is my pleasure.

One piece of outdoor work I have continued religiously, for the
reason, no doubt, that I love wood fires, even in warm weather. I
never neglect my wood-stack, the foundations of which were laid for me
by Isaiah Fetch. Every day I take axe and saw and cut a certain amount
of logwood. My hearth will take logs of just four feet in length, and
I feed it royally. The wood costs nothing; when burning it is highly
aromatic, and I like to be profuse with it; I who can recall an
interminable London winter, in a garret full of leaks and draught
holes, in which the only warming apparatus, besides the poor lamp that
lighted my writing-table, was a miserable oil-stove, which I could not
afford to keep alight except for the brief intervals during which it
boiled my kettle for me.

Yes, I know every speck and every cranny of my cavernous hearth, and
it is rarely that it calls for any kindling wood of a morning. As a
rule a puff from the bellows and a fresh log--one of the little
fellows, no thicker than your leg, which I split for this purpose--is
enough to set it on its way flaming and glowing for another day of
comforting life. I often tell myself it would never do for me to think
of giving up my hermitage and returning to England, because of Punch
and my ever-glowing hearth; even if there were no other reasons, as of
course there are.

For, whilst the comparative zestfulness of the first months, when I
worked with Isaiah Fetch to improve my rough-hewn little hermitage,
may not have endured, yet are there many obvious and substantial
advantages for me in the life I lead here, in this little bush
back-water, where the few human creatures who know of my existence regard
me as a poor, harmless kind of crank, and