[Replying to General Donnelly’s arguments against his resigning all his official posts, he writes:—­]

Dartmouth, September 21, 1884.

My dear Donnelly,

Your letters, having made a journey to Penzance (where I told my wife I should go last Friday, but did not, and brought up here instead) turned up this morning.

I am glad to have seen Lord Carlingford’s letter, and I am very much obliged to him for his kind expressions.  Assuredly I will not decide hastily.

Now for your letter—­I am all for letters in these matters.  Not that we are either of us “impatient and irritable listeners”—­oh dear, no!  “I have my faults,” as the miser said, “but avarice is not one of them”—­and we have our faults too, but notoriously they lie in the direction of long-suffering and apathy.

Nevertheless there is a good deal to be said for writing.  Mine is itself a discipline in patience for my correspondent.

Imprimis.  I scorn all your chaff about Society.  My great object for years has been to keep out of it, not to go into it.  Just you wait till the Misses Donnelly grow up—­I trust there may be five or ten of them—­and see what will happen to you.  But apart from this, so long as I live in London, so long will it be practically impossible for me to keep out of dining and giving of dinners—­and you know that just as well as I do.

2nd.  I mean to give up the Presidency, but don’t see my way to doing so next St. Andrew’s Day.  I wish I could—­but I must deal fairly by the Society.

3rd.  The suggestion of the holiday at Christmas is the most sensible thing you have said.  I could get six weeks under the new arrangement ("Botany,” January and half February) without interfering with my lectures at all.  But then there is the blessed Home Office to consider.  There might be civil war between the net men and the rod men in six weeks, all over the country, without my mild influence.

4th.  I must give up my Inspectorship.  The mere thought of having to occupy myself with the squabbles of these idiots of country squireens and poachers makes me sick—­and is, I believe, the chief cause of the morbid state of my mucous membranes.

All this week shall I be occupied in hearing one Jackass contradict another Jackass about questions which are of no importance.

I would almost as soon be in the House of Commons.

Now see how reasonable I am.  I agree with you (a) that I must get out of the hurly-burly of society; (b) that I must get out of the Presidency; (c) that I must get out of the Inspectorship, or rather I agree with myself on that matter, you having expressed no opinion.

That being so, it seems to me that I must, willy-nilly, give up South Kensington.  For—­and here is the point you had in your mind when you lamented your possible impatience about something I might say—­I swear by all the gods that are not mine, nothing shall induce me to apply to the Treasury for anything but the pound of flesh to which I am entitled.