NDS

_Saranac Lake, Adirondack Mountains,
New York, U.S.A., November 21, 1887._

MY DEAR SYMONDS,--I think we have both meant and wanted to write to you
any time these months; but we have been much tossed about, among new
faces and old, and new scenes and old, and scenes (like this of Saranac)
which are neither one nor other. To give you some clue to our affairs, I
had best begin pretty well back. We sailed from the Thames in a vast
bucket of iron that took seventeen days from shore to shore. I cannot
describe how I enjoyed the voyage, nor what good it did me; but on the
Banks I caught friend catarrh. In New York and then in Newport I was
pretty ill; but on my return to New York, lying in bed most of the time,
with St. Gaudens the sculptor sculping me, and my old friend Low around,
I began to pick up once more. Now here we are in a kind of wilderness of
hills and firwoods and boulders and snow and wooden houses. So far as we
have gone the climate is grey and harsh, but hungry and somnolent; and
although not charming like that of Davos, essentially bracing and
briskening. The country is a kind of insane mixture of Scotland and a
touch of Switzerland and a dash of America, and a thought of the British
Channel in the skies. We have a decent house--

_December 6th._--A decent house, as I was saying, sir, on a hill-top,
with a look down a Scottish river in front, and on one hand a Perthshire
hill; on the other, the beginnings and skirts of the village play hide
and seek among other hills. We have been below zero, I know not how far
(-10 at 8 A.M. once), and when it is cold it is delightful; but hitherto
the cold has not held, and we have chopped in and out from frost to
thaw, from snow to rain, from quiet air to the most disastrous
north-westerly curdlers of the blood. After a week of practical thaw,
the ice still bears in favoured places. So there is hope.

I wonder if you saw my book of verses? It went into a second edition,
because of my name, I suppose, and its _prose_ merits. I do not set up
to be a poet. Only an all-round literary man: a man who talks, not one
who sings. But I believe the very fact that it was only speech served
the book with the public. Horace is much a speaker, and see how popular!
Most of Martial is only speech, and I cannot conceive a person who does
not love his Martial; most of Burns, also, such as "The Louse," "The
Toothache," "The Haggis," and lots more of his best. Excuse this li