the P.M.G. was charming. I have written four pages in the Contemporary,
which Bunting found room for: they are not very good, but I shall do
more for his memory in time.

About the death, I have long hesitated, I was long before I could tell
my mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am glad. If we could
have had my father, that would have been a different thing. But to keep
that changeling--suffering changeling--any longer, could better none and
nothing. Now he rests; it is more significant, it is more like himself.
He will begin to return to us in the course of time, as he was and as we
loved him.

My favourite words in literature, my favourite scene--"O let him pass,"
Kent and Lear--was played for me here in the first moment of my return.
I believe Shakespeare saw it with his own father. I had no words; but it
was shocking to see. He died on his feet, you know; was on his feet the
last day, knowing nobody--still he would be up. This was his constant
wish; also that he might smoke a pipe on his last day. The funeral would
have pleased him; it was the largest private funeral in man's memory
here.

We have no plans, and it is possible we may go home without going
through town. I do not know; I have no views yet whatever; nor can have
any at this stage of my cold and my business.--Ever yours,

R. L. S.

TO SIR WALTER SIMPSON

Written during a short visit to me between his return from Scotland
and his departure for New York.

_British Museum [July 1887]._

MY DEAR SIMPSON,--This is a long time I have not acknowledged the Art of
Golf, though I read it through within thirty-six hours of its arrival. I
have been ill and out of heart, and ill again and again ill, till I am
weary of it, and glad indeed to try the pitch-farthing hazard of a trip
to Colorado or New Mexico. There we go, if I prove fit for the start, on
August 20th.

Meanwhile, the Art of Golf. A lot of it is very funny, and I liked the
fun very well; but what interested me most was the more serious part,
because it turns all the while on a branch of psychology that no one has
treated and that interests me much: the psychology of athletics. I had
every reason to be interested in it, because I am abnormal: I have no
memory in athletics. I have forgotten how to ride and how to skate; and
I should not be the least surprised if I had forgotten how to swim.

I find I can write no more: it is the first I have tried since I w