least. The excess of materials weighs upon me. My
grandfather is a delightful comedy part; and I have to treat him besides
as a serious and (in his way) a heroic figure, and at times I lose my
way, and I fear in the end will blur the effect. However, _a la grace de
Dieu!_ I'll make a spoon or spoil a horn. You see, I have to do the
Building of the Bell Rock by cutting down and packing my grand-sire's
book, which I rather hope I have done, but do not know. And it makes a
huge chunk of a very different style and quality between Chapters II.
and IV. And it can't be helped! It is just a delightful and exasperating
necessity. You know, the stuff is really excellent narrative: only,
perhaps there's too much of it! There is the rub. Well, well, it will be
plain to you that my mind is affected; it might be with less. _The Ebb
Tide_ and _Northern Lights_ are a full meal for any plain man.

I have written and ordered your last book, _The Real Thing_, so be sure
and don't send it. What else are you doing or thinking of doing? News I
have none, and don't want any. I have had to stop all strong drink and
all tobacco, and am now in a transition state between the two, which
seems to be near madness. You never smoked, I think, so you can never
taste the joys of stopping it. But at least you have drunk, and you can
enter perhaps into my annoyance when I suddenly find a glass of claret
or a brandy-and-water give me a splitting headache the next morning. No
mistake about it; drink anything, and there's your headache. Tobacco
just as bad for me. If I live through this breach of habit, I shall be a
white-livered puppy indeed. Actually I am so made, or so twisted, that I
do not like to think of a life without the red wine on the table and the
tobacco with its lovely little coal of fire. It doesn't amuse me from a
distance. I may find it the Garden of Eden when I go in, but I don't
like the colour of the gate-posts. Suppose somebody said to you, you are
to leave your home, and your books, and your clubs, and go out and camp
in mid-Africa, and command an expedition, you would howl, and kick, and
flee. I think the same of a life without wine and tobacco; and if this
goes on, I've got to go and do it, sir, in the living flesh!

I thought Bourget was a friend of yours? And I thought the French were a
polite race? He has taken my dedication with a stately silence that has
surprised me into apoplexy. Did I go and dedicate my book[64] to the
nasty a