Here's breid an' wine an' kebbuck an' canty cracks at e'en To the folks that mind o' me when I'm awa', But them that hae forgot me, O ne'er to be forgi'en-- They may a' gae tapsalteerie in a raw! I have mighty little to say, dear boy, to seem worth 2-1/2d. I have thought of the Piper, but he does not seem to come as yet; I get him too metaphysical. I shall make a shot for _Hester_, as soon as I have finished the _Emigrant_ and the _Vendetta_ and perhaps my _Dialogue on Character and Destiny_. Hester and Don Juan are the two that smile on me; but I will touch nothing in the shape of a play until I have made my year's income sure. You understand, and you see that I am right? I have read _M. Auguste_ and the _Crime inconnu_, being now abonné to a library, and found them very readable, highly ingenious, and so French that I could not keep my gravity. The _Damned Ones of the Indies_ now occupy my attention; I have myself already damned them repeatedly. I am, as you know, the original person the wheels of whose chariot tarried; but though I am so slow, I am rootedly tenacious. Do not despair. _Hester_ and the _Don_ are sworn in my soul; and they shall be. Is there no _news_? Real news, newsy news. Heavenly blue, this is strange. Remember me to the lady of the Cawstle, my toolip, and ever was, GEORGE THE PIEMAN. TO SIDNEY COLVIN With reference to the following, it must be explained that the first draft of the first part of the _Amateur Emigrant_, when it reached me about Christmas, had seemed to me, compared to his previous travel papers, a somewhat wordy and spiritless record of squalid experiences, little likely to advance his still only half-established reputation; and I had written to him to that effect, inopportunely enough, with a fuller measure even than usual of the frankness which always marked our intercourse. _608 Bush Street, San Francisco, California [January 1880]._