out of our house, and begging for anything about
fashions and manners (fashions particularly) for 1814. Can you help?
Both the Justice Clerk and St. Ives fall in that fated year. Indeed I
got into St. Ives while going over the Annual Register for the other.
There is a kind of fancy list of Chaps. of St. Ives. (It begins in
Edin^b Castle.) I. Story of a lion rampant (that was a toy he had made,
and given to a girl visitor). II. Story of a pair of scissors. III. St.
Ives receives a bundle of money. IV. St. Ives is shown a house. V. The
Escape. VI. The Cottage (Swanston Cottage). VII. The Hen-house. VIII.
Three is company and four none. IX. The Drovers. X. The Great North
Road. XI. Burchell Fenn. XII. The covered cart. XIII. The doctor. XIV.
The Luddites. XV. Set a thief to catch a thief. XVI. M. le Comte de
Kerouaille (his uncle, the rich _emigre_, whom he finds murdered). XVII.
The cousins. XVIII. Mr. Sergeant Garrow. XIX. A meeting at the Ship,
Dover. XX. Diane. XXI. The Duke's Prejudices. XXII. The False Messenger.
XXIII. The gardener's ladder. XXIV. The officers. XXV. Trouble with the
Duke. XXVI. Fouquet again. XXVII. The Aeronaut. XXVIII. The True-Blooded
Yankee. XXIX. In France. I don't know where to stop. Apropos, I want a
book about Paris, and the _first return_ of the _emigres_ and all up to
the _Cent Jours_: d'ye ken anything in my way? I want in particular to
know about them and the Napoleonic functionaries and officers, and to
get the colour and some vital details of the business of exchange of
departments from one side to the other.[58] Ten chapters are drafted,
and VIII. re-copied by me, but will want another dressing for luck. It
is merely a story of adventure, rambling along; but that is perhaps the
guard that "sets my genius best," as Alan might have said. I wish I
could feel as easy about the other! But there, all novels are a heavy
burthen while they are doing, and a sensible disappointment when they
are done.

For God's sake, let me have a copy of the new German Samoa White Book.

R. L. S.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

Telling how the projected tale, _The Pearl Fisher_, had been cut down
and in its new form was to be called _The Schooner Farallone_
(afterwards changed to _The Ebb Tide_).

[_Vailima, February 1893._]

MY DEAR CHARLES,--I have had the influenza, as I believe you know: this
has been followed by two goes of my old friend Bloodie Jacke, and I have
had fefe--the isla