Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/165

Rh boasting or not, they should know that I practise what I preach. I had not intended to say what I now shall, but the coming of this letter last night just turns the balance of the decision with me. I enclose it with the other; you see it is one from my bookseller, Mr. Quaritch, offering me Fischer's work on the Flora of Java, and Latour's on Indian Orchidaceæ, bound together, for twenty guineas. Now, I am writing a book on botany just now, for young people, chiefly on wild flowers, and I want these two books very much; but I simply cannot afford to buy them, because I sent my last spare twenty guineas to Mr. Shields yesterday for this widow. And though you may think it not the affair of the public that I have not this book on Indian flowers, it is their affair finally, that what I write for them should be founded on as broad knowledge as possible; whatever value my own book may or may not have, it will just be in a given degree worth less to them, because of my want of this knowledge.

116. So again—for having begun to speak of myself I will do so yet more frankly—