wife and I dwell sundered: she in lodgings,
preparing for the move; I here in the club, and at my old
trade--bedridden. Naturally, the visit home is given up; we only wait
our opportunity to get to Samoa, where, please, address me.

Have I yet asked you to despatch the books and papers left in your care
to me at Apia, Samoa? I wish you would, _quam primum_.

R. L. S.

TO HENRY JAMES

_Union Club, Sydney, August 1890._

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,--Kipling is too clever to live. The _Bete
Humaine_[36] I had already perused in Noumea, listening the while to the
strains of the convict band. He is a Beast; but not human, and, to be
frank, not very interesting. "Nervous maladies: the homicidal ward,"
would be the better name: O, this game gets very tedious.

Your two long and kind letters have helped to entertain the old familiar
sickbed. So has a book called _The Bondman_, by Hall Caine; I wish you
would look at it. I am not half-way through yet. Read the book, and
communicate your views. Hall Caine, by the way, appears to take Hugo's
view of History and Chronology (_Later_; the book doesn't keep up; it
gets very wild.)

I must tell you plainly--I can't tell Colvin--I do not think I shall
come to England more than once, and then it'll be to die. Health I enjoy
in the tropics; even here, which they call sub- or semi-tropical, I come
only to catch cold. I have not been out since my arrival; live here in
a nice bedroom by the fireside, and read books and letters from Henry
James, and send out to get his _Tragic Muse_, only to be told they can't
be had as yet in Sydney, and have altogether a placid time. But I can't
go out! The thermometer was nearly down to 50 deg. the other day--no
temperature for me, Mr. James: how should I do in England? I fear not at
all. Am I very sorry? I am sorry about seven or eight people in England,
and one or two in the States. And outside of that, I simply prefer
Samoa. These are the words of honesty and soberness. (I am fasting from
all but sin, coughing, _The Bondman_, a couple of eggs and a cup of
tea.) I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems)
civilisation. Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of (what is
technically called) God's green earth. The sea, islands, the islanders,
the island life and climate, make and keep me truly happier. These last
two years I have been much at sea, and I have _never wearied_; sometimes
I have indeed grown impatient for some de