Meanwhile I push on with the Year Books. My first volume is done in the rough and a good piece is in print. Being away from books I become intrigued in small verbal problems. Am now observing the liberal use of the verb _lier_. In French you (an advocate) are said to _lier_ the seisin, or the esplees, or the like, in this person or that. When translating I naturally write "lay," and I have a suspicion that the "to lay" of our legal vocabulary (e.g. to lay these damages) really descends from lier--que piensa Vᵈ? That is the sort of triviality that occupies my mind:--however I am meditating a final say about the personality of states and corporations. Why not bring over Salmond to succeed you at Oxford? He is a good man. Local politics are interesting. I think that when Gladstone was in power he never was subjected to such continuous assaults as are directed against the Alcalde of Las Palmas by the organ of opinion that I patronize. Drought and flood, mud and dust, smallpox and measles are all from him, he fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies. But I should like to hear the lectures that you make for los Yanquis (N.B. in a Spanish mouth Americano is apt to mean a Spanish speaking man--and Yanqui is not uncivilly meant). Much rain has fallen--but a road recovers from the most appalling mud in a very few hours. TO LESLIE STEPHEN. CASA VERDA, TAFIRA. _17 Jan. 1903._ The news that we get of you out here is satisfactory rather than satisfying--I mean that we have heard little, but it was all to the good. The last intelligence takes you back to your home and I feel good reason for hoping that long before now you have become reasonably comfortable. What I wish you know. All here goes well. I am having a supremely good time--the only pains are those given by my conscience or by the voice that exists where my conscience should be--but the remedies for moral twinges are not difficult to come by in this world of sin--which also is (locally) a world of corrupting sunshine. I brought with me this time all the three supplementary volumes of _Dict. Natl. Biog._ I stare at them and wonder how anybody can have the energy to make such things. Even novels strike me as laborious productions when the sun is at its best. We have been having rain: and when it rains here you find that the roof of your house has been surprised by the performance. I am now engaged in drying a boxful of copied Year Book which unfortunately was left beneath a weak point in the ceiling. Is it "ceiling" by the way? I don't know, and while I am in the garden the dictionary is in the house and I don't care a perrita (primarily little bitch but also a five centimo piece) how this or any other word spells itself; and all this I ascribe to the sun. It will be a good day when I get a postcard signed L. S.--but don't be in a hurry to send one before the spirit moves you. Back at Hobbes again? I hope so. Florence joins me in hopes--as you can well suppose.