for your frank, agreeable and natural letter.
It is certainly very pleasant that all you young fellows should enjoy
my work and get some good out of it and it was very kind in you to
write and tell me so. The tale of the suicide is excellently droll,
and your letter, you may be sure, will be preserved. If you are to
escape unhurt out of your present business you must be very careful,
and you must find in your heart much constancy. The swiftly done work
of the journalist and the cheap finish and ready made methods to which
it leads, you must try to counteract in private by writing with the
most considerate slowness and on the most ambitious models. And when I
say "writing"--O, believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in
mind. If you will do this I hope to hear of you some day.

Please excuse this sermon from

Your obliged

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

In the spring of 1889 Richard as the correspondent of the Philadelphia
Telegraph, accompanied a team of Philadelphia cricketers on a tour of
Ireland and England, but as it was necessary for him to spend most of
his time reporting the matches played in small university towns, he saw
only enough of London to give him a great longing to return as soon as
the chance offered. Late that summer he resumed his work on The Press,
but Richard was not at all satisfied with his journalistic progress,
and for long his eyes had been turned toward New York. There he knew
that there was not only a broader field for such talent as he might
possess, but that the chance for adventure was much greater, and it was
this hope and love of adventure that kept Richard moving on all of his
life.

On a morning late in September, 1889, he started for New York to look
for a position as reporter on one of the metropolitan newspapers. I do
not know whether he carried with him any letters or that he had any
acquaintances in the journalistic world on whose influence he counted,
but, in any case, he visited a number of offices without any success
whatever. Indeed, he had given up the day as wasted, and was on his
way to take the train back to Philadelphia. Tired and discouraged, he
sat down on a bench in City Hall Park, and mentally shook his fist at
the newspaper offices on Park Row that had given him so cold a
reception. At this all-important moment along came Arthur Brisbane,
whom Richard had met in London when the former was the English
correspondent of The Sun. Brisbane had recent