WCP166

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

Feb^y. 8th, 1901

My dear Will

I am very busy now working 3 or 4 hours every day at my new Ed. [of] Wond[erful]. Cent[ury]. I shall leave the Electrical Chapter for the last, & if it is too difficult it will have to be omitted or cut very short. I think I have just thought of the answer to the 3 live Enigma, & it is a very poor one — "Yellow River" — The "Methodist Mail" is I suppose put as one of "yellow" press. River is of course in a dale. & "Yellow River" is in China. [2] Will you get me the London Address of the Waltham Watch Company, — if as I suppose they have an office or shop there where their watches can be sent to be repaired. The Watch maker ^here had mine about 5 times within a month, the hand-setting apparatus & the regulating part having gone wrong — & now the hands are wrong again, & cannot be moved, & it is no good letting him have it again.

I should think your holiday must have been not very interesting except [3] from having company & the fun of "batching" as the Americans say, in which I suppose you could give your friends points. It has been the very worst autumn & winter I ever remember for dull, damp, wet, dreary, chilly, foggy, gloomy, stormy, & sunless weather. We had a second snowfall last Monday, & frosty nights since, but a little milder last night so that most of the snow is gone today but not all.

I suppose your hills are still snow covered.

I should be glad to hear [4] about the Fellowship dinner or supper or whatever it is. I have just read through a second time — The Prisoner of Zenda & Rupert of Hentza [sic] — having before read the end so long after the beginning that I lost the connection. I enjoyed it immensely, & though it ends so tragically I feel that it could not end otherwise. Rudolph Rassendyl[l] is a grand character — the finest type of an English gentleman I remember in any story — a man who would deceive only for the sake of others, never for himself, & therefore could not have taken the king’s place at the end. The story is most wonderfully constructed & worked out.

Your affectionate Pa | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]