"With truth I think I may say that there are few, very few, perhaps none, living who have gone through such a series of diseases. There are many dead--many who have killed themselves for a tenth part of the pain--there are few living. "My wearied and exhausted system constantly craves rest. My brain is always asking for rest. I never sleep. I have not slept now for five years properly, always waking, with broken bits of sleep, and restlessness, and in the morning I get up more weary than I went to bed. Rest, that is what I need. You thought naturally that it was work I needed; but I have been at work, and next time I will tell you all of it. It is not work, it is _rest_ for the brain and the nervous system. I have always had a suspicion that it was the ceaseless work that caused me to go wrong at first. "It has taken me a long time to write this letter; it will take you but a few minutes to read it. Had you not sent me to the sea in the spring I do not think that I should have been alive to write it." Was there ever a more miserable tale of slow torture? Parts of it--the parts relating to his operations--I have omitted. Enough remains. Picture to yourself this tall, gaunt man reduced to a skeleton, not able to use his pen for more than a few minutes at a time, his spine broken down, spitting blood, lying back on the sofa, his mind full of splendid thoughts which he _cannot_ put upon paper, dictating sometimes when he was strong enough, resolved on making money so as to save himself the "disgrace" of applying to the Literary Fund, full of pain by day and night, growing daily weaker, but never losing heart or hope--is there in the whole calamitous history of authors a picture more full of sadness and of pity than this? He writes again on January 10, 1887. He is no worse. The letter is about money matters--that is to say, he has no money. On February 2 he writes again. He has been able to dictate a little. "I hope to be able to do more work after a time; when the weather becomes sufficiently warm for me to sit out of doors. With me the power to write is almost entirely dependent upon being out of doors. Confined indoors, I have nothing to write, and I cannot express my ideas if they do occur to me so boldly. You have no idea what a difference it makes. A little air and movement seem to brighten up the mind and give it play. I am in hope, too, that as the warmth comes on the sea will help me more. Up to the present the winter has gone well." The last letter to Mr. Scott was written on March 23. He is pleased and surprised to hear that the fund raised for him amounts to so much. Perhaps it will enable him to go abroad presently. Meantime, he has had a relapse--an attack of haemorrhage--"and then so feeble that I have not been able to dictate. This loss of time worries me more than I can tell you."