e perhaps a little. When we got in, we had run out of beer,
stout, cocoa, soda-water, water, fresh meat, and (almost) of biscuit.
But it was a thousandfold pleasanter than a great big Birmingham liner
like a new hotel; and we liked the officers, and made friends with the
quarter-masters, and I (at least) made a friend of a baboon (for we
carried a cargo of apes), whose embraces have pretty near cost me a
coat. The passengers improved, and were a very good specimen lot, with
no drunkard, no gambling that I saw, and less grumbling and backbiting
than one would have asked of poor human nature. Apes, stallions, cows,
matches, hay, and poor men-folk, all, or almost all, came successfully
to land.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO HENRY JAMES

[_Newport, U.S.A., September 1887._]

MY DEAR JAMES,--Here we are at Newport in the house of the good
Fairchilds; and a sad burthen we have laid upon their shoulders. I have
been in bed practically ever since I came. I caught a cold on the Banks
after having had the finest time conceivable, and enjoyed myself more
than I could have hoped on board our strange floating menagerie:
stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast continent
of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and the
stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the ports at
our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the
little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown
overboard like little bluish babies; and the big monkey, Jacko, scoured
about the ship and rested willingly in my arms, to the ruin of my
clothing; and the man of the stallions made a bower of the black
tarpaulin, and sat therein at the feet of a raddled divinity, like a
picture on a box of chocolates; and the other passengers, when they were
not sick, looked on and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll
till the bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break
loose in our state-room, and you have the voyage of the _Ludgate Hill_.
She arrived in the port of New York, without beer, porter, soda-water,
curacoa, fresh meat, or fresh water; and yet we lived, and we regret
her.

My wife is a good deal run down, and I am no great shakes.

America is, as I remarked, a fine place to eat in, and a great place for
kindness; but, Lord, what a silly thing is popularity! I envy the cool
obscurity of Skerryvore. If it even paid, said Meanness! and