You don't know her; she's James More's daughter, and a respectable young wumman; the Miss Grants think so - the Lord Advocate's daughters - so there can't be anything really wrong. Pretty soon we all go to Holland, and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be damned; and the tale concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted. This is the last authentic news. You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a practical novelist; so you don't know the temptation to let your characters maunder. Dumas did it, and lived. But it is not war; it ain't sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all the time. Brown's appendix is great reading.
My only grief is that I can't Use the idolatrous occupant.
Yours ever,
R. L. S.
Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant of Kensington.
Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
AUGUST 14, 1745.
TO MISS AMELIA BALFOUR - MY DEAR COUSIN, - We are going an expedition to leeward on Tuesday morning. If a lady were perhaps to be encountered on horseback - say, towards the Gasi-gasi river - about six A.M., I think we should have an episode somewhat after the style of the '45. What a misfortune, my dear cousin, that you should have arrived while your cousin Graham was occupying my only guest-chamber - for Osterley Park is not so large in Samoa as it was at home - but happily our friend Haggard has found a corner for you!
The King over the Water - the Gasi-gasi water - will be pleased to see the clan of Balfour mustering so thick around his standard.
I have (one serious word) been so lucky as to get a really secret interpreter, so all is for the best in our little adventure into the WAVERLEY NOVELS. - I am your affectionate cousin,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Observe the stealth with which I have blotted my signature, but we must be political A OUTRANCE.
Letter: TO THE COUNTESS OF JERSEY
MY DEAR COUSIN, - I send for your information a copy of my last letter to the gentleman in question. 'Tis thought more wise, in consideration of the difficulty and peril of the enterprise, that we should leave the town in the afternoon, and by several detachments. If you would start for a ride with the Master of Haggard and Captain Lockhart of Lee, say at three o'clock of the afternoon, you would make some rencounters by the wayside which might be agreeable to your political opinions. All present will be staunch.
The Master of Haggard might extend his ride a little, and return through the marsh and by the nuns' house (I trust that has the proper flavour), so as a little to diminish the effect of separation. - I remain, your affectionate cousin to command,
O TUSITALA.
P.S. - It is to be thought this present year of grace will be historical.
Letter: TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD
[VAILIMA, AUGUST 1892.]
MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD, - Thank you a thousand times for your letter. You are the Angel of (the sort of) Information (that I care about); I appoint you successor to the newspaper press; and I beg of you, whenever you wish to gird at the age, or think the bugs out of proportion to the roses, or despair, or enjoy any cosmic or epochal emotion, to sit down again and write to the Hermit of Samoa. What do I think of it all? Well, I love the romantic solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not without laughter, I have to love it still. They are such ducks! But what are they made of? We were just as solemn as that about atheism and the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway - we held atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody, knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was lucky enough, or there would have been more windows broken. What is apt to puzzle one at first sight in the New Youth is that, with such rickety and risky problems always at heart, they should not plunge down a Niagara of Dissolution. But let us remember the high practical timidity of youth. I was a particularly brave boy - this I think of myself, looking back - and plunged into adventures and experiments, and ran risks that it still surprises me to recall. But, dear me, what a fear I was in of that strange blind machinery in the midst of which I stood; and with what a compressed heart and what empty lungs I would touch a new crank and await developments! I do not mean to say I do not fear life still; I do; and that terror (for an adventurer like myself) is still one of the chief joys of living.