Please do not hesitate to send me anything that you may be willing to write. If you try to make it perfect before you let me see it, it will never come. My remarks about the kind of mind which holds its thoughts and feelings by so precarious a tenure that they are detachable for use by others were not made with a forethought of your failure. Mr. Harte of the New England Magazine seems to want me to know his work (I asked to) and sends me a lot of it cut from the magazine. I pass it on to you, and most of it is just and true. But I'm making another long letter. I wish I were not an infidel--so that I could say: "God bless you," and mean it literally. I wish there _were_ a God to bless you, and that He had nothing else to do. Please let me hear from you. Sincerely, A. B. [St. Helena, September 28, 1892.] MY DEAR BLANCHE, I have been waiting for a full hour of leisure to write you a letter, but I shall never get it, and so I'll write you anyhow. Come to think of it, there is nothing to say--nothing that _needs_ be said, rather, for there is always so much that one would like to say to you, best and most patient of _sayees_. I'm sending you and your father copies of my book. Not that I think you (either of you) will care for that sort of thing, but merely because your father is my co-sinner in making the book, and you in sitting by and diverting my mind from the proof-sheets of a part of it. Your part, therefore, in the work is the typographical errors. So you are in literature in spite of yourself. I appreciate what you write of my girl. She is the best of girls to me, but God knoweth I'm not a proper person to direct her way of life. However, it will not be for long. A dear friend of mine--the widow of another dear friend--in London wants her, and means to come out here next spring and try to persuade me to let her have her--for a time at least. It is likely that I shall. My friend is wealthy, childless and devoted to both my children. I wish that in the meantime she (the girl) could have the advantage of association with _you_. Please say to your father that I have his verses, which I promise myself pleasure in reading. _You_ appear to have given up your ambition to "write things." I'm sorry, for "lots" of reasons--not the least being the selfish one that I fear I shall be deprived of a reason for writing you long dull letters. Won't you _play_ at writing things? My (and Danziger's) book, "The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter," is to be out next month. The Publisher--I like to write it with a reverent capital letter--is unprofessional enough to tell me that he regards it as the very best piece of English composition that he ever saw, and he means to make the world know it. Now let the great English classics hide their diminished heads and pale their ineffectual fires!