xuv BEGINNING OF LAST ILLNESS 301 



am too late to reply to your Lordship's P.S. in her last 

 letter to the humble — Wadih ; but even now it is 

 perhaps still too early for the gardener =Boustany, to 

 shake the most tender branch of his life. 



May it not be " too much asking " to please cast away 

 a fraction of an hour by casting a glance on the " Prodigal 

 Son," considering at the same time that it has taken me 

 above four months of solitary meditation and contem- 

 plation. Though only four hours of a night to write it, 

 and once written, again a considerable number of days 

 of hesitation to depart with it as a " picture of me " 

 destined to fall under the sight of Lord Avebury. 



Dear sir, it is a critical moment — but my beats and 

 throbs are as regular as ever. "To be or not to be, 

 this is the question " : Whether I should stick to my 

 present post of £10 per 1 moon's revolution, and continue 

 to live on the figures (only ten in shape) I add and 

 register — and die when Death knocks ... or bid this 

 routine together with colleagues, friends and relatives 

 farewell, and entrust myself to the sea, with the sole 

 hope of one day ashoring on the British Isles, with the 

 twofold ambition of shaking hands with the author of 

 The Use of Life and On Peace and Happiness, and of 

 challenging that day's circumstances, thus : — come 

 what may ; here have I come ; Oxford is my goal ; 

 a foul or a fall ; a failer or a fool ; I want to know more 

 and become more. I may be hung ; I may be stabbed ; 

 I may be smashed and ground to earth ; but starvation 

 can never be a cause to my death. . . . For Work is 

 Nature's kind tiger, and no cruel Humanity can dare 

 mutilate its arm. . . . ? 



My Lord ! This is the question whose answer alone 

 could stand in the way of this letter in which I beg to 

 inform you that the book will be out of press in the 

 course of the next twenty days, in the second place that 

 my readers will be only too anxious to contemplate the 

 portrait of their author of Peace and Happiness ; and 

 in the third place, that it is to be dedicated to an English 

 " gentleman," under whom I am practising my " routine." 

 But may it be the main object of this letter and its 

 " appendages " to clear out My Lord's " not quite sure 

 that I am addressing you by the right style, if not 

 please excuse it and tell me how I should do so next 

 time when you write." My dear lord pray do not 



