Winter in the Riviera. 361 



your letter dissipates the illusion, and I must get back to 

 work as promptly as possible. What a year of continuous 

 outdoor life and activity, and total, abstinence from books, 

 might do for my eyes I can't say ; it would no doubt im- 



prove them, at any rate. 



LONDON, March /, 1879. 



DEAR BROTHER : I wrote and sent out to be posted for 

 Thursday's mail an editorial to go first in the April 

 Monthly. I now send a review of Bain's new book. 



You will thus eke out another month. I have not 

 heard whether the Germanic has arrived, but presume she 

 has, and that she will go Thursday, and at all events I ex- 

 pect to leave here Wednesday afternoon for Liverpool. 

 The weather continues simply detestable, and I have been 

 feeling very sharply the effects of it ; but it is a little 

 better to-day, and I feel it decidedly. I have been bothered 

 to snatch intervals to get these things done, for Spencer 

 watches me constantly and will listen to nothing. He does 

 not know that I have written anything for the Monthly. 



STEAMER GERMANIC, March 7, 

 MY DEAR SPENCER : I had a pleasant ride to Liverpool 

 on time, with a lively, fresh companion, a Methodist, who 

 vigorously undertook my conversion. He began thus: "If 

 we smash up, sir, are you insured I don't mean in the 

 accident company, but in the Grand Salvation Insurance 

 Company ? No ? Then I have the advantage of you ; I 

 took out a policy twenty years ago." I told him there was 

 a great deal of bogus insurance nowadays, and gave him 

 the history of my father's experience in being swindled by 

 a fraudulent fire insurance company, and then put it to 

 him as a necessary business precaution that the validity of 

 the corporation and the soundness of the transaction 

 should be looked into. Being a business man he saw the 

 point, and I had a great deal of fun with him. 



