ature as I hold, and have held
for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet
all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing,
objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of
creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about
me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. The life of
the plants comes through my finger-tips, their struggles go to my heart
like supplications. I feel myself blood-boltered; then I look back on my
cleared grass, and count myself an ally in a fair quarrel, and make
stout my heart.

It is but a little while since I lay sick in Sydney, beating the fields
about the navy and Dean Swift and Dryden's Latin hymns; judge if I love
this reinvigorating climate, where I can already toil till my head swims
and every string in the poor jumping Jack (as he now lies in bed) aches
with a kind of yearning strain, difficult to suffer in quiescence.

As for my damned literature,[16] God knows what a business it is,
grinding along without a scrap of inspiration or a note of style. But it
has to be ground, and the mill grinds exceeding slowly though not
particularly small. The last two chapters have taken me considerably
over a month, and they are still beneath pity. This I cannot continue,
time not sufficing; and the next will just have to be worse. All the
good I can express is just this; some day, when style revisits me, they
will be excellent matter to rewrite. Of course, my old cure of a change
of work would probably answer, but I cannot take it now. The treadmill
turns; and, with a kind of desperate cheerfulness, I mount the idle
stair. I haven't the least anxiety about the book; unless I die, I shall
find the time to make it good; but the Lord deliver me from the thought
of the Letters! However, the Lord has other things on hand; and about
six to-morrow, I shall resume the consideration practically, and face
(as best I may) the fact of my incompetence and disaffection to the
task. Toil I do not spare; but fortune refuses me success. We can do
more, Whatever-his-name-was, we can deserve it. But my misdesert began
long since, by the acceptation of a bargain quite unsuitable to all my
methods.[17]

To-day I have had a queer experience. My carter has from the first been
using my horses for his own ends; when I left for Sydney, I put him on
his honour to cease, and my back was scarce turned ere he was forfe