I seem to be writing an obituary notice. ABSIT OMEN! But I feel very sure that these considerations will have done you more good than medicine.
By the by, did you ever play piquet? I have fallen a victim to this debilitating game. It is supposed to be scientific; God save the mark, what self-deceivers men are! It is distinctly less so than cribbage. But how fascinating! There is such material opulence about it, such vast ambitions may be realised - and are not; it may be called the Monte Cristo of games. And the thrill with which you take five cards partakes of the nature of lust - and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and nine of a suit that you discarded, and O! but the world is a desert! You may see traces of discouragement in my letter: all due to piquet! There has been a disastrous turn of the luck against me; a month or two ago I was two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, I have been anything from four thousand eight hundred to five thousand two hundred astern. If I have a sixieme, my beast of a partner has a septieme; and if I have three aces, three kings, three queens, and three knaves (excuse the slight exaggeration), the devil holds quatorze of tens! - I remain, my dear James Payn, your sincere and obliged friend - old friend let me say,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO MISS MIDDLETON
VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1894.
DEAR MISS MIDDLETON, - Your letter has been like the drawing up of a curtain. Of course I remember you very well, and the Skye terrier to which you refer - a heavy, dull, fatted, graceless creature he grew up to be - was my own particular pet. It may amuse you, perhaps, as much as 'The Inn' amused me, if I tell you what made this dog particularly mine. My father was the natural god of all the dogs in our house, and poor Jura took to him of course. Jura was stolen, and kept in prison somewhere for more than a week, as I remember. When he came back Smeoroch had come and taken my father's heart from him. He took his stand like a man, and positively never spoke to my father again from that day until the day of his death. It was the only sign of character he ever showed. I took him up to my room and to be my dog in consequence, partly because I was sorry for him, and partly because I admired his dignity in misfortune.
With best regards and thanks for having reminded me of so many pleasant days, old acquaintances, dead friends, and - what is perhaps as pathetic as any of them - dead dogs, I remain, yours truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO A. CONAN DOYLE
VAILIMA, SAMOA, SEPTEMBER 9, 1894.
MY DEAR CONAN DOYLE, - If you found anything to entertain you in my TREASURE ISLAND article, it may amuse you to know that you owe it entirely to yourself. YOUR 'First Book' was by some accident read aloud one night in my Baronial 'All. I was consumedly amused by it, so was the whole family, and we proceeded to hunt up back IDLERS and read the whole series. It is a rattling good series, even people whom you would not expect came in quite the proper tone - Miss Braddon, for instance, who was really one of the best where all are good - or all but one! ... In short, I fell in love with 'The First Book' series, and determined that it should be all our first books, and that I could not hold back where the white plume of Conan Doyle waved gallantly in the front. I hope they will republish them, though it's a grievous thought to me that that effigy in the German cap - likewise the other effigy of the noisome old man with the long hair, telling indelicate stories to a couple of deformed negresses in a rancid shanty full of wreckage - should be perpetuated. I may seem to speak in pleasantry - it is only a seeming - that German cap, sir, would be found, when I come to die, imprinted on my heart. Enough - my heart is too full. Adieu. - Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
(in a German cap, damn 'em!)
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
[VAILIMA, SEPTEMBER 1894.]
MY DEAR CHARLES, - .