on
regularly or to make it, to be up and doing something, are chiefly to be
found the mere mechanical means which must come to the aid of the best
mental efforts.

It is a wilderness of a day, here, in the way of blowing and raining,
and as darkly dismal, at four o'clock, as need be. My head is but just
now raised from a day's writing, but I will not lose the post without
sending you a word.

Katie was here yesterday, just come back from Clara White's (that was),
in Scotland. In the midst of her brilliant fortune, it is too clear to
me that she is already beckoned away to follow her dead sisters.
Macready was here from Saturday evening to yesterday morning, older but
looking wonderfully well, and (what is very rare in these times) with
the old thick sweep of hair upon his head. Georgina being left alone
here the other day, was done no good to by a great consternation among
the servants. On going downstairs, she found Marsh (the stableman)
seated with great dignity and anguish in an arm-chair, and incessantly
crying out: "I am dead." To which the women servants said with great
pathos (and with some appearance of reason): "No, you ain't, Marsh!" And
to which he persisted in replying: "Yes, I am; I am dead!" Some
neighbouring vagabond was impressed to drive a cart over to Rochester
and fetch the doctor, who said (the patient and his consolers being all
very anxious that the heart should be the scene of affliction):
"Stomach."

[Sidenote: Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Tuesday Night, Oct. 14th, 1862._

MY DEAR WILKIE,

Frank Beard has been here this evening, of course since I posted my this
day's letter to you, and has told me that you are not at all well, and
how he has given you something which he hopes and believes will bring
you round. It is not to convey this insignificant piece of intelligence,
or to tell you how anxious I am that you should come up with a wet sheet
and a flowing sail (as we say at sea when we are not sick), that I
write. It is simply to say what follows, which I hope may save you some
mental uneasiness. For I was stricken ill when I was doing "Bleak
House," and I shall not easily forget what I suffered under the fear of
not being able to come up to time.

Dismiss that fear (if you have it) altogether from your mind. Write to
me at Paris at any moment, and say you are unequal to your work, and