eem so much too pretentious for a
pamphlet. It will be about the size of _Treasure Island_, I believe. Of
course, as you now know, my case of conscience cleared itself off, and I
began my intervention directly to one of the parties. The other, the
Chief Justice, I am to inform of my book the first occasion. God knows
if the book will do any good--or harm; but I judge it right to try.
There is one man's life certainly involved; and it may be all our lives.
I must not stand and slouch, but do my best as best I can. But you may
conceive the difficulty of a history extending to the present week, at
least, and where almost all the actors upon all sides are of my personal
acquaintance. The only way is to judge slowly, and write boldly, and
leave the issue to fate.... I am far indeed from wishing to confine
myself to creative work; that is a loss, the other repairs; the one
chance for a man, and, above all, for one who grows elderly, ahem, is to
vary drainage and repair. That is the one thing I understand--the
cultivation of the shallow solum of my brain. But I would rather, from
soon on, be released from the obligation to write. In five or six years
this plantation--suppose it and us still to exist--should pretty well
support us and pay wages; not before, and already the six years seem
long to me. If literature were but a pastime!

I have interrupted myself to write the necessary notification to the
Chief Justice.

I see in looking up Longman's letter that it was as usual the letter of
an obliging gentleman; so do not trouble him with my reminder. I wish
all my publishers were not so nice. And I have a fourth and a fifth
baying at my heels; but for these, of course, they must go wanting.

_Dec. 2nd._--No answer from the Chief Justice, which is like him, but
surely very wrong in such a case. The lunch bell! I have been off work,
playing patience and weeding all morning. Yesterday and the day before I
drafted eleven and revised nine pages of Chapter V., and the truth is, I
was extinct by lunch-time, and played patience sourly the rest of the
day. To-morrow or next day I hope to go in again and win. Lunch 2nd
Bell.

_Dec. 2nd, afternoon._--I have kept up the idleness; blew on the pipe to
Belle's piano; then had a ride in the forest all by my nainsel; back and
piped again, and now dinner nearing. Take up this sheet with nothing to
say. The weird figure of Faauma is in the room washing my windows, in a
black lavalava (kilt) wi