dure to be dependent much longer, it stops my
mouth. Something I must find shortly. I mean when I am able for
anything. However I am much better already; and have been writing not
altogether my worst although not very well. Walt Whitman is stopped. I
have bemired it so atrociously by working at it when I was out of humour
that I must let the colour dry; and alas! what I have been doing in its
place doesn't seem to promise any money. However it is all practice and
it interests myself extremely. I have now received L80, some L55 of
which still remain; all this is more debt to civilisation and my
fellowmen. When shall I be able to pay it back? You do not know how much
this money question begins to take more and more importance in my eyes
every day. It is an old phrase of mine that money is the _atmosphere_ of
civilised life, and I do hate to take the breath out of other people's
nostrils. I live here at the rate of more than L3 a week and I do
nothing for it. If I didn't hope to get well and do good work yet and
more than repay my debts to the world, I should consider it right to
invest an extra franc or two in laudanum. But I _will_ repay it.--Always
your faithful friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

[_Menton, December, 1873._]

MY DEAR BAXTER,--At last, I must write. I must say straight out that I
am not recovering as I could wish. I am no stronger than I was when I
came here, and I pay for every walk, beyond say a quarter of a mile in
length, by one or two, or even three, days of more or less prostration.
Therefore let nobody be down upon me for not writing. I was very
thankful to you for answering my letter; and for the princely action of
Simpson in writing to me, I mean before I had written to him, I was
ditto to an almost higher degree. I hope one or another of you will
write again soon; and, remember, I still live in hope of reading Grahame
Murray's address.

I have not made a joke, upon my living soul, since I left London. O!
except one, a very small one, that I had made before, and that I very
timidly repeated in a half-exhilarated state towards the close of
dinner, like one of those dead-alive flies that we see pretending to be
quite light and full of the frivolity of youth in the first sunshiny
days. It was about mothers' meetings, and it was damned small, and it
was my ewe lamb--the Lord knows I couldn't have made another to save my
life--and a clergyman quarrelled with m