ong here. Twelfth Objection: The
cause of England in Ireland is not worth supporting. _A qui le
dites-vous?_ And I am not supporting that. Home Rule, if you like. Cause
of decency, the idea that populations should not be taught to gain
public ends by private crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a
threat of crime is to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole
fabric of man's decency.

TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN

The first paragraph of the following refers to the _Life of Fleeming
Jenkin_; the second, to a remark of his correspondent that a task
such as he had proposed to himself in Ireland should be undertaken
by a society rather than an individual.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, April 1887._]

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,--The Book. It is all drafted: I hope soon to send
you for comments Chapters III., IV., and V. Chapter VII. is roughly but
satisfactorily drafted: a very little work should put that to rights.
But Chapter VI. is no joke; it is a _mare magnum_: I swim and drown and
come up again; and it is all broken ends and mystification: moreover, I
perceive I am in want of more matter. I must have, first of all, a
little letter from Mr. Ewing about the phonograph work: _If_ you think
he would understand it is quite a matter of chance whether I use a word
or a fact out of it. If you think he would not: I will go without. Also,
could I have a look at Ewing's _precis_? And lastly, I perceive I must
interview you again about a few points; they are very few, and might
come to little; and I propose to go on getting things as well together
as I can in the meanwhile, and rather have a final time when all is
ready and only to be criticised. I do still think it will be good. I
wonder if Trelat would let me cut? But no, I think I wouldn't after all;
'tis so quaint and pretty and clever and simple and French, and gives
such a good sight of Fleeming: the plum of the book, I think.

You misunderstood me in one point: I always hoped to found such a
society; that was the outside of my dream, and would mean entire
success. _But_--I cannot play Peter the Hermit. In these days of the
Fleet Street journalist, I cannot send out better men than myself, with
wives or mothers just as good as mine, and sisters (I may at least say)
better, to a danger and a long-drawn dreariness that I do not share. My
wife says it's cowardice; what brave men are the leader-writers! Call it
cowardice; it is mine. Mind you, I ma