prices keep up--and it seems a clear
duty to waste none of it on gadding about. ... My Life of my family
fills up intervals, and should be an excellent book when it is done, but
big, damnably big.

My dear old man, I perceive by a thousand signs that we grow old, and
are soon to pass away; I hope with dignity; if not, with courage at
least. I am myself very ready; or would be--will be--when I have made a
little money for my folks. The blows that have fallen upon you are
truly terrifying; I wish you strength to bear them. It is strange, I
must seem to you to blaze in a Birmingham prosperity and happiness; and
to myself I seem a failure. The truth is, I have never got over the last
influenza yet, and am miserably out of heart and out of kilter. Lungs
pretty right, stomach nowhere, spirits a good deal overshadowed; but
we'll come through it yet, and cock our bonnets. (I confess with sorrow
that I am not yet quite sure about the _intellects_; but I hope it is
only one of my usual periods of non-work. They are more unbearable now,
because I cannot rest. _No rest but the grave for Sir Walter!_ O the
words ring in a man's head.)

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_[Vailima] August 1893._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--Quite impossible to write. Your letter is due to-day; a
nasty, rainy-like morning with huge blue clouds, and a huge indigo
shadow on the sea, and my lamp still burning at near 7. Let me humbly
give you news. Fanny seems on the whole the most, or the only, powerful
member of the family; for some days she has been the Flower of the
Flock. Belle is begging for quinine. Lloyd and Graham have both been
down with "belly belong him" (Black Boy speech). As for me, I have to
lay aside my lawn tennis, having (as was to be expected) had a smart but
eminently brief hemorrhage. I am also on the quinine flask. I have been
re-casting the beginning of the _Hanging Judge_ or _Weir of Hermiston_;
then I have been cobbling on my Grandfather, whose last chapter (there
are only to be four) is in the form of pieces of paper, a huge welter of
inconsequence, and that glimmer of faith (or hope) which one learns at
this trade, that somehow and some time, by perpetual staring and
glowering and re-writing, order will emerge. It is indeed a queer hope;
there is one piece for instance that I want in--I cannot put it one
place for a good reason--I cannot put it another for a better--and every
time I look at it, I turn sick and put the MS