'What was before us we know not, And we know not what shall succeed.' _To H. M. S._ 'Habkern: August 1890. 'There is a French pensionnaire staying here, the same as I am. He is very polite, but his tastes are diametrically opposite to mine. He likes wine, walking, women, smoking, painting, violin and piano playing, dogs, and the like. 'He asked me whether I liked the French. I told him "No," and gave him a good many reasons. He abhors the Germans. I told him I thought the Germans were a fine race. I'm occupying my time {18} in sleeping, arguing, observing the natives, and reading a Tauchnitz edition of "Martin Chuzzlewit," which is good, though already a young girl of seventeen has been introduced, very beautiful and all the rest, and I'm afraid she won't be poisoned, but marry a certain young man already introduced. I'd give a good deal to be able to write a novel in which all the young ladies tumbled out of windows, six stories high, and were picked up dead. I think I must try and write one. Shall I dedicate it to you? The heroine will be a plain old lady with white curls, close on sixty-five, without any money, but with a certain amount of intellect. There will be no marriages, but suicides and murders if necessary. 'I'm inventing a German word of 1,000 letters. It is to be divided into some 150 or 200 compartments. After each compartment there is five minutes for refreshments. After about the 500th letter there will be half an hour allowed for dinner. After the 600th letter or so there will be a notice to the effect that no person with a weak heart may proceed further without consulting a medical man. After about the 980th there will be a notice forbidding any one to go further until their family doctor is in attendance. I have thought of the groundwork of the word--the finished word I'm going to send to M----, as he has the strongest constitution of any one I know. Then I shall get Duke Bismarck to patent it; after which I shall take out a professorship on the strength of it at Berne. It will, of course, be the "Hauptsache" of my existence.' {19} Forbes was far from being an athlete, but in 1891, shortly before his ordination, he accomplished the feat of walking with two athletic friends from London to Cambridge in a day, a distance of more than fifty miles. The following description is by Mr. A. N. C. Kittermaster, who was one of his companions. _Walk from London to Cambridge._