Well, here I am at last; it is a Sunday, blowing hard, with a grey sky with the leaves flying; and I have nothing to say. I ought to have no doubt; since it's so long since last I wrote; but there are times when people's lives stand still. If you were to ask a squirrel in a mechanical cage for his autobiography, it would not be very gay. Every spin may be amusing in itself, but is mighty like the last; you see I compare myself to a lighthearted animal; and indeed I have been in a very good humour. For the weather has been passable; I have taken a deal of exercise, and done some work. But I have the strangest repugnance for writing; indeed, I have nearly got myself persuaded into the notion that letters don't arrive, in order to salve my conscience for never sending them off. I'm reading a great deal of fifteenth century: _Trial of Joan of Arc_, _Paston Letters_, _Basin_,[21] etc., also Boswell daily by way of a Bible; I mean to read Boswell now until the day I die. And now and again a bit of _Pilgrim's Progress_. Is that all? Yes, I think that's all. I have a thing in proof for the Cornhill called _Virginibus Puerisque_. _Charles of Orleans_ is again laid aside, but in a good state of furtherance this time. A paper called _A Defence of Idlers_ (which is really a defence of R. L. S.) is in a good way. So, you see, I am busy in a tumultuous, knotless sort of fashion; and as I say, I take lots of exercise, and I'm as brown as a berry. This is the first letter I've written for--O I don't know how long. _July 30th._--This is, I suppose, three weeks after I began. Do, please, forgive me. To the Highlands, first, to the Jenkins'; then to Antwerp; thence, by canoe with Simpson, to Paris and Grez (on the Loing, and an old acquaintance of mine on the skirts of Fontainebleau) to complete our cruise next spring (if we're all alive and jolly) by Loing and Loire, Saone and Rhone to the Mediterranean. It should make a jolly book of gossip, I imagine. God bless you. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. _P.S._--_Virginibus Puerisque_ is in August Cornhill. _Charles of Orleans_ is finished, and sent to Stephen; _Idlers_ ditto, and sent to Grove; but I've no word of either. So I've not been idle. R. L. S. TO W. E. HENLEY In a well-known passage of the _Inland Voyage_ the following incident is related to the same purport, but in another style:-- _Chauny, Aisne [September 1876]._