bout fifteen Cornhill pages have already
coule'd from under my facile plume--no, I mean eleven, fifteen of
MS.--and we are not much more than half-way through, Charles and I; but
he's a pleasant companion. My health is very well; I am in a fine
exercisy state. Baynes is gone to London; if you see him, inquire about
my _Burns_. They have sent me L5, 5s. for it, which has mollified me
horrid. L5, 5s. is a good deal to pay for a read of it in MS.; I can't
complain.--Yours,

R. L. S.

TO MRS. SITWELL

This dates from just before the canoeing trip recounted in the
_Inland Voyage_.

[_Swanston, July 1876._]

Well, here I am at last; it is a Sunday, blowing hard, with a grey sky
with the leaves flying; and I have nothing to say. I ought to have no
doubt; since it's so long since last I wrote; but there are times when
people's lives stand still. If you were to ask a squirrel in a
mechanical cage for his autobiography, it would not be very gay. Every
spin may be amusing in itself, but is mighty like the last; you see I
compare myself to a lighthearted animal; and indeed I have been in a
very good humour. For the weather has been passable; I have taken a deal
of exercise, and done some work. But I have the strangest repugnance for
writing; indeed, I have nearly got myself persuaded into the notion that
letters don't arrive, in order to salve my conscience for never sending
them off. I'm reading a great deal of fifteenth century: _Trial of Joan
of Arc_, _Paston Letters_, _Basin_,[21] etc., also Boswell daily by way
of a Bible; I mean to read Boswell now until the day I die. And now and
again a bit of _Pilgrim's Progress_. Is that all? Yes, I think that's
all. I have a thing in proof for the Cornhill called _Virginibus
Puerisque_. _Charles of Orleans_ is again laid aside, but in a good
state of furtherance this time. A paper called _A Defence of Idlers_
(which is really a defence of R. L. S.) is in a good way. So, you see, I
am busy in a tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say, I take
lots of exercise, and I'm as brown as a berry.

This is the first letter I've written for--O I don't know how long.

_July 30th._--This is, I suppose, three weeks after I began. Do, please,
forgive me.

To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkins'; then to Antwerp; thence, by
canoe with Simpson, to Paris and Grez (on the Loing, and an old
acquaintance of mine on the skirts of Fontainebleau) to complete our
cru