fear, is bile. I hope I may impute it to Christmas festivities
rather than to any permanent disorder!

P.S.--I return the verses, as I think you would like to keep them....

* * * * *

I did very well in the Isle of Man; had two good solitary walks, drank
deep draughts of--don't know how to describe it--that social brewage
which I get nowhere else. Very likely other people get it in their own
habitats. But it really does seem to me as if the whole island was
quivering and trembling all over with _stories_--they are like leaves on
a tree. The people are always telling them to one another, and any
morning or evening you hear, whether you like it or not, innumerable
anecdotes, sayings, tragedies, comedies--I wonder whether they lie
fearfully. They are a marvellously _narrational_ community. And you've
not been there a day before all this closes round you with a quiet
familiarity of "use and custom" which is most fascinating. Nothing else
in the universe seems of any consequence.

And warly cares, and warly men,
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O!

A week more and I should have become reabsorbed into this medium past
recovery and past recognition....

I have been musing a good deal over my "Dooiney-molla"[1]: he is now
taking shape, and looms rather large. I believe you will like him, and
his fiery little groom. These good souls do well to visit my dreams:
they are such a comfort; and, do you know, they positively do "go on" in
my dreams. Here are two lines which came tripping at the window of my
slumbers last night:

1. "When the sun was jus' puttin' on his shoes" (morning),

for which I instantly seemed to discover a parallel--to wit:

"Sthreelin' oft his golden stockings" (the sun again, evening).

2. "Jus' rags tore off the Divil's ould shirt" (=witches' charms, or
spells).

There will be a very good witch in this poem, I promise you: look out!
----[2] are sounding me about "The Doctor";... They would try to make it
a popular book. The others tried to make it a drawing-room book, with
the result that the few purchasers thereof hid it somewhere behind their
book-shelves, and even there trembled for the morals of the
housemaids....

* * * * *

We went into the church, and sat at a long service. The curate preached
on Judas Iscariot; the vicar conducted a service in the churchyard.
"Judas did this, Judas thought that"; then from the