_Monterey, 21st October [1879]._
MY DEAR COLVIN,--Although you have absolutely disregarded my plaintive
appeals for correspondence, and written only once as against God knows
how many notes and notikins of mine--here goes again. I am now all alone
in Monterey, a real inhabitant, with a box of my own at the P. O. I have
splendid rooms at the doctor's, where I get coffee in the morning (the
doctor is French), and I mess with another jolly old Frenchman, the
stranded fifty-eight-year-old wreck of a good-hearted, dissipated, and
once wealthy Nantais tradesman. My health goes on better; as for work,
the draft of my book was laid aside at p. 68 or so; and I have now, by
way of change, more than seventy pages of a novel, a one-volume novel,
alas! to be called either _A Chapter in the Experience of Arizona_
_Breckonridge_ or _A Vendetta in the West_, or a combination of the
two. The scene from Chapter IV. to the end lies in Monterey and the
adjacent country; of course, with my usual luck, the plot of the story
is somewhat scandalous, containing an illegitimate father for piece of
resistance.... Ever yours,