To Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson
La Solitude, Hyères-les-Palmiers, Var, January 1 (1884).
MY DEAR PEOPLE,—A Good New Year to you. The year closes, leaving me with £50 in the bank, owing no man nothing, £100 more due to me in a week or so, and £150 more in the course of the month; and I can look back on a total receipt of £465, 0s. 6d. for the last twelve months!
And yet I am not happy!
Yet I beg! Here is my beggary:—
1. Sellar’s Trial.
2. George Borrow’s Book about Wales.
3. My Grandfather’s Trip to Holland.
4. And (but this is, I fear, impossible) the Bell Rock Book.