Herne Hill
,
14th August
, 1880.
I've just finished my Scott paper: [28] but it has retouchings and notings yet to do. I couldn't write a word before; haven't so much as a syllable to Diddie, and only a move at chess to Macdonald, for, you know, to keep a chess player waiting for a move is like keeping St. Lawrence unturned.
21st August, 1880.
I'm leaving to-day for Dover, and a line from you to-morrow or Monday would find me certainly at Poste Restante, Abbeville.
I have not been working at all, but enjoying myself (only that takes up time all the same) at Crystal Palace concerts, and jugglings, and at Zoological Gardens, where I had a snake seven feet long to play with, only I hadn't much time to make friends, and it rather wanted to get away all the time. And I gave the hippopotamus whole buns, and he was delighted, and saw the cormorant catch fish thrown to him six yards off; never missed one; you would have thought the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea lions sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish also; but they missed sometimes and had to flop off their chairs into the water and then flop out again and flop up again.