CASA VERDA,
TAFIRA.
_17 Jan. 1903._
Your letter about Paris is to hand. Well I envy you. Yours are the joys
that I should have liked if I had my choice--but I must not complain,
for I am having a superlatively good time. I don't exactly know why it
is but the sun makes all the difference to me--I live here and don't
live in England. I am even beginning to boast of my powers as a hill
rider: but if ever I come here again I shall bring a machine with a
very low gear and a free wheel: that is what you want if you live half
way up a road that rises pretty steadily for 21 kilometres to 2600
feet. My friend Bennett who has vast experience recommends a gear of 50
for such work.
Meanwhile I push on with the Year Books. My first volume is done in
the rough and a good piece is in print. Being away from books I become
intrigued in small verbal problems. Am now observing the liberal use
of the verb _lier_. In French you (an advocate) are said to _lier_ the
seisin, or the esplees, or the like, in this person or that. When
translating I naturally write "lay," and I have a suspicion that the
"to lay" of our legal vocabulary (e.g. to lay these damages) really
descends from lier--que piensa Vᵈ? That is the sort of triviality
that occupies my mind:--however I am meditating a final say about the
personality of states and corporations. Why not bring over Salmond
to succeed you at Oxford? He is a good man. Local politics are
interesting. I think that when Gladstone was in power he never was
subjected to such continuous assaults as are directed against the
Alcalde of Las Palmas by the organ of opinion that I patronize. Drought
and flood, mud and dust, smallpox and measles are all from him, he
fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies. But I should like to
hear the lectures that you make for los Yanquis (N.B. in a Spanish
mouth Americano is apt to mean a Spanish speaking man--and Yanqui is
not uncivilly meant).
Much rain has fallen--but a road recovers from the most appalling mud
in a very few hours.