_December_ 5_th_, 1892.
_P.S._—They tell me your health is not strong. Man, come out here and
try the Prophet’s chamber. There’s only one bad point to us—we do rise
early. The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of silence—and that
ours is a noisy house—and she is a chatterbox—I am not answerable for
these statements, though I do think there is a touch of garrulity about
my premises. We have so little to talk about, you see. The house is
three miles from town, in the midst of great silent forests. There is a
burn close by, and when we are not talking you can hear the burn, and the
birds, and the sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six hundred
feet below us, and about three times a month a bell—I don’t know where
the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Hans Andersen’s
story for all I know. It is never hot here—86 in the shade is about our
hottest—and it is never cold except just in the early mornings. Take it
for all in all, I suppose this island climate to be by far the healthiest
in the world—even the influenza entirely lost its sting. Only two
patients died, and one was a man nearly eighty, and the other a child
below four months. I won’t tell you if it is beautiful, for I want you
to come here and see for yourself. Everybody on the premises except my
wife has some Scotch blood in their veins—I beg your pardon—except the
natives—and then my wife is a Dutchwoman—and the natives are the next
thing conceivable to Highlanders before the forty-five. We would have
some grand cracks!