Hang it all! They have blocked the street and are laying it with asphalte; just in May, as usual. From early morning the quiet of my rooms is disturbed by the noise of the work, when I go out I scramble over heaps of rubbish, past smoking cauldrons of pitch, and when I come home at night my cab drops me nearly a quarter of a mile away. Moreover, one neighbouring house is being painted, and the other is being rebuilt. I fly from falling dust and brickbats, only to run against ladders and paint-pots. It is awful. And now my Aunt JANE is coming up from Bath, and has invited herself to tea at my chambers. Her rheumatism prevents her from walking more than a yard or two, she cannot bear any noise, and the smell of paint makes her ill. She is very rich, and could leave all she has to the poor. Accurately speaking, that class includes me, but in my aunt's opinion it does not. She is very suspicious, and, if I made excuses and invited her to tea anywhere else, she would feel convinced that I was hiding some guilty secret in my dull, quiet, respectable rooms. She is very prim, and the mere suggestion of such a thing would alienate her from me for ever. Why on earth can't she stop in Bath? And I shall have to go with her to May meetings! It is impossible; I must fly. But where? She has a horror and suspicion of all foreign nations, except perhaps the steady, industrious Swiss. Good idea--Switzerland. But what reason can I give for rushing off just now? Someone must send me. I have it. She knows I try to write a little, so I will say my editor requires me to go at once to Geneva to write a series of articles in the Jardin Alpin d'Acclimatation on Alpine botany. Botany, how respectable! Geneva, how sedate! Makes one think at once of CALVIN and Geneva bands. These sound rather frivolous, something like German bands, but they are not really so, only, I believe, a sort of clerical cravat. Then I will start off to Paris, the direct way to Geneva.