to Dr. Bakewell

Vailima, August 7, 1894.

DEAR DR. BAKEWELL,—I am not more than human.  I am more human than is wholly convenient, and your anecdote was welcome.  What you say about unwilling work, my dear sir, is a consideration always present with me, and yet not easy to give its due weight to.  You grow gradually into a certain income; without spending a penny more, with the same sense of restriction as before when you painfully scraped two hundred a year together, you find you have spent, and you cannot well stop spending, a far larger sum; and this expense can only be supported by a certain production.  However, I am off work this month, and occupy myself instead in weeding my cacao, paper chases, and the like.  I may tell you, my average of work in favourable circumstances is far greater than you suppose: from six o’clock till eleven at latest, [350] and often till twelve, and again in the afternoon from two to four.  My hand is quite destroyed, as you may perceive, to-day to a really unusual extent.  I can sometimes write a decent fist still; but I have just returned with my arms all stung from three hours’ work in the cacao.—Yours, etc.,

R. L. S.