tic, not a
jot for the picturesque or the beautiful, other than about people. It
bored me hellishly to write the _Emigrant_; well, it's going to bore
others to read it; that's only fair.

I should also write to others; but indeed I am jack-tired, and must go
to bed to a French novel to compose myself for slumber.--Ever your
affectionate friend,

R. L. S.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

_608 Bush Street, San Francisco, California, Jan. 23, 1880._

MY DEAR AND KIND WEG,--It was a lesson in philosophy that would have
moved a bear, to receive your letter in my present temper. For I am now
well and well at my ease, both by comparison. First, my health has
turned a corner; it was not consumption this time, though consumption it
has to be some time, as all my kind friends sing to me, day in, day out.
Consumption! how I hate that word; yet it can sound innocent, as,
_e.g._, consumption of military stores. What was wrong with me, apart
from colds and little pleuritic flea-bites, was a lingering malaria; and
that is now greatly overcome, I eat once more, which is a great
amusement and, they say, good for the health. Second, many of the
thunderclouds that were overhanging me when last I wrote, have silently
stolen away like Longfellow's Arabs: and I am now engaged to be married
to the woman whom I have loved for three years and a half. I do not yet
know when the marriage can come off; for there are many reasons for
delay. But as few people before marriage have known each other so long
or made more trials of each other's tenderness and constancy, I permit
myself to hope some quiet at the end of all. At least I will boast
myself so far; I do not think many wives are better loved than mine will
be. Third and last, in the order of what has changed my feelings, my
people have cast me off, and so that thundercloud, as you may almost
say, has overblown. You know more than most people whether or not I
loved my father.[27] These things are sad; nor can any man forgive
himself for bringing them about; yet they are easier to meet in fact
than by anticipation. I almost trembled whether I was doing right, until
I was fairly summoned; then, when I found that I was not shaken one jot,
that I could grieve, that I could sharply blame myself, for the past,
and yet never hesitate one second as to my conduct in the future, I
believed my cause was just and I leave it with the Lord. I certainly
look for no reward, nor any abiding city either