“O my goodn’s”! as Jean says. You have now encountered at last the wo heaviest calamity that can befal an author. The scarlet fever, once domesticated, is a permanent member of the family. Money may desert you, friends forsake you, enemies grow indifferent to you, but the scarlet fever will be true to you, through thick & thin, till you be all saved or damned, down to the last one. I say these things to cheer you. As to the pecuniary feature—the six weeks which Jean robbed me of, happened by accident to be the very most valuable 6 weeks of my entire life.

The bare suggestion of scarlet fever in the family makes me shudder; I believe I would almost rather have Osgood publish a book for me.

You folks have our most sincere sympathy. O, the intrusion of this hideous disease is an unspeakable disaster.

My billiard table is stacked up with books relating to the Sandwich Islands; the walls are upholstered with scraps of paper penciled with notesⒶemendation drawn from them. I have saturated myself with knowledge of that unimaginably beautiful land & that most strange & fascinating people. And I have begun a story. Its hidden motive will illustrate a but-littleⒶemendation considered fact in human nature: that the religious folly you are born in you will die in, no matter what apparently reasonabler religious folly may seem to have taken its place meanwhile & abolished & obliterated it. I start Bill Ragsdale at 12 years of age, & the heroine at 4, in the midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its picturesque & amazing customs & superstitions, 3 months before the arrival of the missionaries & the erection of a shallow Christianity upon the ruins of the old paganism.

Then these two will become educated Christians, & highly civilized. And then ‸ wi I will jump 15 years, & do Ragsdale’s leper business. When we come to dramatize, we can draw a deal of matter from the story, all ready to our hand.