conversions. They may do very well for
St. Paul; in the case of an Andaman islander they mean less than
nothing. In fact, what you have to do is to teach the parents in the
interests of their great-grandchildren.

Now, my dear Adelaide, dismiss from your mind the least idea of fault
upon your side; nothing is further from the fact. I cannot forgive you,
for I do not know your fault. My own is plain enough, and the name of it
is cold-hearted neglect; and you may busy yourself more usefully in
trying to forgive me. But ugly as my fault is, you must not suppose it
to mean more than it does; it does not mean that we have at all
forgotten you, that we have become at all indifferent to the thought of
you. See, in my life of Jenkin, a remark of his, very well expressed, on
the friendships of men who do not write to each other. I can honestly
say that I have not changed to you in any way; though I have behaved
thus ill, thus cruelly. Evil is done by want of--well, principally by
want of industry. You can imagine what I would say (in a novel) of any
one who had behaved as I have done. _Deteriora sequor_. And you must
somehow manage to forgive your old friend; and if you will be so very
good, continue to give us news of you, and let us share the knowledge of
your adventures, sure that it will be always followed with
interest--even if it is answered with the silence of ingratitude. For I
am not a fool; I know my faults, I know they are ineluctable, I know
they are growing on me. I know I may offend again, and I warn you of it.
But the next time I offend, tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady,
and don't lacerate my heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults
of your own and purely gratuitous penance. I might suspect you of irony!

We are all fairly well, though I have been off work and off--as you know
very well--letter-writing. Yet I have sometimes more than twenty
letters, and sometimes more than thirty, going out each mail. And Fanny
has had a most distressing bronchitis for some time, which she is only
now beginning to get over. I have just been to see her; she is
lying--though she had breakfast an hour ago, about seven--in her big
cool, mosquito-proof room, ingloriously asleep. As for me, you see that
a doom has come upon me: I cannot make marks with a pen--witness
"ingloriously" above; and my amanuensis not appearing so early in the
day, for she is then immersed in household affairs, and I can hear her
"steering