Here is a long midnight dissertation; with myself; with you. Please let me hear. But I charge you this: if you see in this idea of mine the finger of duty, do not dissuade me. I am nearing forty, I begin to love my ease and my home and my habits, I never knew how much till this arose; do not falsely counsel me to put my head under the bed-clothes. And I will say this to you: my wife, who hates the idea, does not refuse. "It is nonsense," says she, "but if you go, I will go." Poor girl, and her home and her garden that she was so proud of! I feel her garden most of all, because it is a pleasure (I suppose) that I do not feel myself to share. 1. Here is a great wrong. 2. " a growing wrong. 3. " a wrong founded on crime. 4. " crime that the Government cannot prevent. 5. " crime that it occurs to no man to defy. 6. But it has occurred to me. 7. Being a known person, some will notice my defiance. 8. Being a writer, I can _make_ people notice it. 9. And, I think, _make_ people imitate me. 10. Which would destroy in time this whole scaffolding of oppression. 11. And if I fail, however ignominiously, that is not my concern. It is, with an odd mixture of reverence and humorous remembrances of Dickens, be it said--it is A-nother's. And here, at I cannot think what hour of the morning, I shall dry up, and remain--Yours, really in want of a little help, R. L. S. Sleepless at midnight's dewy hour. " " witching " " " maudlin " etc. _Next morning._--Eleventh Objection: I have a father and mother. And who has not? Macduff's was a rare case; if we must wait for a Macduff. Besides, my father will not perhaps be long here. Twelfth Objection: The cause of England in Ireland is not worth supporting. _A qui le dites-vous?_ And I am not supporting that. Home Rule, if you like. Cause of decency, the idea that populations should not be taught to gain public ends by private crime, the idea that for all men to bow before a threat of crime is to loosen and degrade beyond redemption the whole fabric of man's decency. TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN The first paragraph of the following refers to the _Life of Fleeming Jenkin_; the second, to a remark of his correspondent that a task such as he had proposed to himself in Ireland should be undertaken by a society rather than an individual. [_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, April 1887._]