_Vailima_, _Samoa_, _November_ 1891.
MY DEAR MR. ANGUS,—Herewith the invaluable sheets. They came months
after your letter, and I trembled; but here they are, and I have scrawled
my vile name on them, and ‘thocht shame’ as I did it. I am expecting the
sheets of your catalogue, so that I may attack the preface. Please give
me all the time you can. The sooner the better; you might even send me
early proofs as they are sent out, to give me more incubation. I used to
write as slow as judgment; now I write rather fast; but I am still ‘a
slow study,’ and sit a long while silent on my eggs. Unconscious
thought, there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil
slow, then take the lid off and look in—and there your stuff is, good or
bad. But the journalist’s method is the way to manufacture lies; it is
will-worship—if you know the luminous quaker phrase; and the will is only
to be brought in the field for study, and again for revision. The
essential part of work is not an act, it is a state.