You will have received from me a letter about _The Wrecker_. No doubt it
is a new experiment for me, being disguised so much as a study of
manners, and the interest turning on a mystery of the detective sort, I
think there need be no hesitation about beginning it in the fall of the
year. Lloyd has nearly finished his part, and I shall hope to send you
very soon the MS. of about the first four-sevenths. At the same time, I
have been employing myself in Samoa, collecting facts about the recent
war; and I propose to write almost at once and to publish shortly a small
volume, called I know not what—the War In Samoa, the Samoa Trouble, an
Island War, the War of the Three Consuls, I know not—perhaps you can
suggest. It was meant to be a part of my travel book; but material has
accumulated on my hands until I see myself forced into volume form, and I
hope it may be of use, if it come soon. I have a few photographs of the
war, which will do for illustrations. It is conceivable you might wish
to handle this in the Magazine, although I am inclined to think you
won’t, and to agree with you. But if you think otherwise, there it is.
The travel letters (fifty of them) are already contracted for in papers;
these I was quite bound to let M’Clure handle, as the idea was of his
suggestion, and I always felt a little sore as to one trick I played him
in the matter of the end-papers. The war-volume will contain some very
interesting and picturesque details: more I can’t promise for it. Of
course the fifty newspaper letters will be simply patches chosen from the
travel volume (or volumes) as it gets written.