and as I do work slowly and conscientiously, I may honestly look forward with satisfaction to the hope of being able to turn a few honest pennies to help us out:  and it is a satisfaction, and a blessing I am thankful for.  I only wish I could please myself better!  However, small writers are wanted as well as big ones, and there is no reason why donkey-carts shouldn’t drive even if there are coaches on the road!...

[Fredericton.] February 3, 1868.

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I am so infinitely obliged to you for your wisdom in re Reka Dom, and very thankful for the criticisms, to which I shall attend.  I mean to compress it very much.  I will keep the river part, though that is really the shadow of some of my best writing, I think, in the Dutch tale describing that scene at Topsham.  I wrote a good bit last night, and was much wishing for the returned MS. But the sight of the proof will help me more than anything.  I lose all judgment of my own work in MS. I feel as if it must be as laborious to read as it has been to write.  Whereas in print it comes freshly on me, and I can criticize it more fairly.  It will not be very long when all is done, I think, and I am so anxious to make it good, I hope it will be satisfactory.  A little praise really does help one to work, and I don’t think makes one a bit less conscientious.

It has been a very jolly mail this time, though the Lexicon has not come.  The Bishop’s is getting worn with use, for Rex does his daily chapter with unfailing regularity, and is murmuring Hebrew at my elbow at this moment as usual.  Mr. James McCombie, the uncle who lives in Aberdeen, the lawyer, has sent me such a pretty book of photographs of Aberdeen! with a kind message about my letter to the poor old Mother, and asking me to write to them.  I had asked for a photo of the old Cathedral graveyard where Rex’s parents and brother and sister are buried, and there is a lovely one of it, but it is a set of views of Aberdeen, very good photos, and a very pretty book.  All Rex’s old haunts.  Isn’t it nice?

[Sketch of Old Machar Cathedral.]

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[Fredericton.] April 4, 1868.

I hoped to have sent you the whole of Reka Dom this mail.  But a most unexpected fall of snow has made the travelling so insecure that it is considered a risk to wait till Monday, and I must send off what I can to-day.  It is so nearly done that I am not now afraid to send off the first part (which will be more than you will want for May), and you may rely on the rest by next mail; and the remainder of Mrs. O. as rapidly as possible.  It has certainly given me a wonderful amount of bother this time, and I was disappointed in the feeling that Rex did not think it quite up to my other things.  But to-day in reading it all, and a lot that he had not seen before, I heard him laughing over it by himself, and he thinks it now one of my best, so I am in great spirits, and mean to finish it with a flourish if possible.  I have cut and carved and clipped till I lost all sense of what was fit to remain, and Rex has insisted on a good deal being replaced.