ve a decent time when the weather is fine; when it is
grey, or windy or wet (as it too often is), I am merely degraded to the
dirt. I get some work done every day with a devil of a heave; not extra
good ever; and I regret my engagement. Whiles I have had the most
deplorable business annoyances too; have been threatened with having to
refund money; got over that; and found myself in the worst scrape of
being a kind of unintentional swindler. These have worried me a great
deal; also old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in
his clutch to some tune.

Do you play All Fours? We are trying it; it is still all haze to me. Can
the elder hand _beg_ more than once? The Port Admiral is at Boston
mingling with millionaires. I am but a weed on Lethe wharf. The wife is
only so-so. The Lord lead us all: if I can only get off the stage with
clean hands, I shall sing Hosanna. "Put" is described quite differently
from your version in a book I have; what are your rules? The Port
Admiral is using a game of Put in a tale of his, the first copy of
which was gloriously finished about a fortnight ago, and the revise
gallantly begun: _The Finsbury Tontine_ it is named, and might fill two
volumes, and is quite incredibly silly, and in parts (it seems to me)
pretty humorous.--Love to all from

AN OLD, OLD MAN.

I say, _Taine's Origines de la France Contemporaine_ is no end; it would
turn the dead body of Charles Fox into a living Tory.

TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN

[_Saranac Lake, December 1887._]

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,--The Opal is very well; it is fed with glycerine
when it seems hungry. I am very well, and get about much more than I
could have hoped. My wife is not very well; there is no doubt the high
level does not agree with her, and she is on the move for a holiday to
New York. Lloyd is at Boston on a visit, and I hope has a good time. My
mother is really first-rate; she and I, despairing of other games for
two, now play All Fours out of a gamebook, and have not yet discovered
its niceties, if any.

You will have heard, I dare say, that they made a great row over me
here. They also offered me much money, a great deal more than my works
are worth: I took some of it, and was greedy and hasty, and am now very
sorry. I have done with big prices from now out. Wealth and self-respect
seem, in my case, to be strangers.

We were talking the other day of how well Fleeming managed to grow rich.
Ah, that is a