s to nothing coming, to a quite inglorious death by
disease and from the lack of attendance; or even if I should be knocked
on the head, as these poor Irish promise, how little any one will care.
It will be a smile at a thousand breakfast-tables. I am nearly forty
now; I have not many illusions. And if I had? I do not love this
health-tending, housekeeping life of mine. I have a taste for danger,
which is human, like the fear of it. Here is a fair cause; a just cause;
no knight ever set lance in rest for a juster. Yet it needs not the
strength I have not, only the passive courage that I hope I could
muster, and the watchfulness that I am sure I could learn.

Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you. Please let
me hear. But I charge you this: if you see in this idea of mine the
finger of duty, do not dissuade me. I am nearing forty, I begin to love
my ease and my home and my habits, I never knew how much till this
arose; do not falsely counsel me to put my head under the bed-clothes.
And I will say this to you: my wife, who hates the idea, does not
refuse. "It is nonsense," says she, "but if you go, I will go." Poor
girl, and her home and her garden that she was so proud of! I feel her
garden most of all, because it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not
feel myself to share.

1. Here is a great wrong.
2. " a growing wrong.
3. " a wrong founded on crime.
4. " crime that the Government cannot prevent.
5. " crime that it occurs to no man to defy.
6. But it has occurred to me.
7. Being a known person, some will notice my defiance.
8. Being a writer, I can _make_ people notice it.
9. And, I think, _make_ people imitate me.
10. Which would destroy in time this whole scaffolding of oppression.
11. And if I fail, however ignominiously, that is not my concern.
It is, with an odd mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances
of Dickens, be it said--it is A-nother's.

And here, at I cannot think what hour of the morning, I shall dry up,
and remain--Yours, really in want of a little help,

R. L. S.

Sleepless at midnight's dewy hour.
" " witching "
" " maudlin "
etc.

_Next morning._--Eleventh Objection: I have a father and mother. And who
has not? Macduff's was a rare case; if we must wait for a Macduff.
Besides, my father will not perhaps be l