le, of whom, since I could judge, I have thought more than ever,
had no ear for languages whatever: his Hapar tribe should be Hapaa, etc.

But this is of no interest to you: suffice it, you see how I am as usual
up to the neck in projects, and really all likely bairns this time. When
will this activity cease? Too soon for me, I dare to say.

R. L. S.

TO JAMES PAYN

_February 4th, 1890_, S.S. Luebeck.

MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,--In virtue of confessions in your last, you would at
the present moment, if you were along of me, be sick; and I will ask you
to receive that as an excuse for my hand of write. Excuse a plain seaman
if he regards with scorn the likes of you pore land-lubbers ashore now.
(Reference to nautical ditty.) Which I may however be allowed to add
that when eight months' mail was laid by my side one evening in Apia,
and my wife and I sat up the most of the night to peruse the
same--(precious indisposed we were next day in consequence)--no letter,
out of so many, more appealed to our hearts than one from the pore,
stick-in-the-mud, land-lubbering, common (or garden) Londoner, James
Payn. Thank you for it; my wife says, "Can't I see him when we get back
to London?" I have told her the thing appeared to me within the spear of
practical politix. (Why can't I spell and write like an honest, sober,
god-fearing litry gent? I think it's the motion of the ship.) Here I was
interrupted to play chess with the chief engineer; as I grow old, I
prefer the "athletic sport of cribbage," of which (I am sure I misquote)
I have just been reading in your delightful _Literary Recollections_.
How you skim along, you and Andrew Lang (different as you are), and yet
the only two who can keep a fellow smiling every page, and ever and
again laughing out loud. I joke wi' deeficulty, I believe; I am not
funny; and when I am, Mrs. Oliphant says I'm vulgar, and somebody else
says (in Latin) that I'm a whore, which seems harsh and even uncalled
for: I shall stick to weepers; a 5s. weeper, 2s. 6d. laugher, 1s.
shocker.

My dear sir, I grow more and more idiotic; I cannot even feign sanity.
Some time in the month of June a stalwart weather-beaten man, evidently
of seafaring antecedents, shall be observed wending his way between the
Athenaeum Club and Waterloo Place. Arrived off No. 17, he shall be
observed to bring his head sharply to the wind, and tack into the outer
haven. "Captain Payn in the harbour?"--"Ay, ay, sir. W