al slave schooners and African
stations. I would not give a page of "Mansfield Park" or a verse of
"In Memoriam" for all the endless fighting of blacks and boarding of
pirates through which the three hypocritical vagabonds ever went. I
am getting old. How old it will shortly be necessary for me to state
precisely, for, as you doubtless know there is going to be a
Census. . . .

I have been trying to knock into shape a story, such as we spoke
about the other day, about the first introduction of Tea, and I should
be glad of your assistance and suggestions. I think I shall lay the
scene in Holland where the merits of tea were first largely agitated,
and fill the scene with the traditional Dutch figures such as I sketch.
I find in Disraeli's "Curiosities of Literature" which I consulted
before coming away that a French writer wrote an elaborate treatise
to prove that tea merchants were always immoral members of society.
It would be rather curious to apply the theory to the present
day. . . .

11, Warwick Gardens,
Kensington.
(undated.)

I direct this letter to your ancient patrimonial estate unknowing
whether it will reach you or where it will reach you if it does;
whether you are shooting polar bears on the ice-fields of Spitzbergen
or cooking missionaries among the cannibals of the South Pacific.
But wherever you are I find some considerable relief in turning from
the lofty correspondence of the secretary (with no disparagement
of my much-esteemed friend, Oldershaw) to another friend
(ifelow-mecallimso as Mr. Verdant Greene said) who can discourse on
some other subjects besides the Society, and who will not devote the
whole of his correspondence to the questions of that excellent and
valuable body. The Society is a very good thing in its way (being
the President I naturally think so) but like other good things, you
may have too much of it, and I have had. . . .

As I said before, I don't know where you are disporting yourself,
beyond some hurried remark about Paris which you dropped in our
hurried interview in one of the "brilliant flashes of silence" between
those imbecile screams and yells and stamping, which even the
natural enthusiasm at the prospect of being "broken up" cannot
excuse.

6, The Quadrant,
North Berwick, Haddington,
Scotland.
(? 1891.)

You will probably guess that