awn--Lloyd's horse and
Fanny's. Such is my quarrel with destiny. But I am mending famously,
come and go on the balcony, have perfectly good nights, and though I
still cough, have no oppression and no hemorrhage and no fever. So if I
can find time and courage to add no more, you will know my news is not
altogether of the worst; a year or two ago, and what a state I should
have been in now! Your silence, I own, rather alarms me. But I tell
myself you have just miscarried; had you been too ill to write, some one
would have written me. Understand, I send this brief scratch not because
I am unfit to write more, but because I have 58 galleys of _The Wrecker_
and 102 of _The Beach of Falesa_ to get overhauled somehow or other in
time for the mail, and for three weeks I have not touched a pen with my
finger.

_Feb. 1st._--The second horse is still alive, but I still think dying.
The first was buried this morning. My proofs are done; it was a rough
two days of it, but done. _Consummatum est; ua uma_. I believe _The
Wrecker_ ends well; if I know what a good yarn is, the last four
chapters make a good yarn--but pretty horrible. _The Beach of Falesa_ I
still think well of, but it seems it's immoral and there's a to-do, and
financially it may prove a heavy disappointment. The plaintive request
sent to me, to make the young folks married properly before "that
night," I refused; you will see what would be left of the yarn, had I
consented.[32] This is a poison bad world for the romancer, this
Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not having any women in it
at all; but when I remember I had _The Treasure of Franchard_ refused as
unfit for a family magazine, I feel despair weigh upon my wrists.

As I know you are always interested in novels, I must tell you that a
new one is now entirely planned. It is to be called _Sophia Scarlet_,
and is in two parts. Part I. The Vanilla Planter. Part II. The
Overseers. No chapters, I think; just two dense blocks of narrative, the
first of which is purely sentimental, but the second has some rows and
quarrels, and winds up with an explosion, if you please! I am just
burning to get at _Sophia_, but I _must_ do this Samoan
journalism--that's a cursed duty. The first part of _Sophia_, bar the
first twenty or thirty pages, writes itself; the second is more
difficult, involving a good many characters--about ten, I think--who
have to be kept all moving, and give the effect of a society. I have
thr