rick he played me when I
could ill afford it: I mean that whenever I think of it, some of the old
wrath kindles, not that I would hurt the poor soul, if I got the world
with it. And Old X----? Is he still afloat? Harmless bark! I gather you
ain't married yet, since your sister, to whom I ask to be remembered,
goes with you. Did you see a silly tale, _John Nicholson's
Predicament_,[15] or some such name, in which I made free with your home
at Murrayfield? There is precious little sense in it, but it might
amuse. Cassell's published it in a thing called _Yule-Tide_ years ago,
and nobody that ever I heard of read or has ever seen _Yule-Tide_. It is
addressed to a class we never met--readers of Cassell's series and that
class of conscientious chaff, and my tale was dull, though I don't
recall that it was conscientious. Only, there's the house at Murrayfield
and a dead body in it. Glad the _Ballads_ amused you. They failed to
entertain a coy public, at which I wondered; not that I set much
account by my verses, which are the verses of Prosator; but I do know
how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns are great. _Rahero_ is for its
length a perfect folk-tale: savage and yet fine, full of tailforemost
morality, ancient as the granite rocks; if the historian, not to say the
politician, could get that yarn into his head, he would have learned
some of his ABC. But the average man at home cannot understand
antiquity; he is sunk over the ears in Roman civilisation; and a tale
like that of _Rahero_ falls on his ears inarticulate. The Spectator said
there was no psychology in it; that interested me much: my grandmother
(as I used to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair
one) cannot so much as observe the existence of savage psychology when
it is put before it. I am at bottom a psychologist and ashamed of it;
the tale seized me one-third because of its picturesque features,
two-thirds because of its astonishing psychology, and the Spectator says
there's none. I am going on with a lot of island work, exulting in the
knowledge of a new world, "a new created world" and new men; and I am
sure my income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of
comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness to the
dull.

I do not know why I pester you with all this trash, above all as you
deserve nothing. I give you my warm _talofa_ ("my love to you," Samoan
salutation). Write me again when the spirit moves you. And som