also get more notice,
should I not? and so, do better for myself in the long run. Now, should
I not? Besides a book with boards is a book with boards, even if it
bain't a very fat one and has no references to Ammianus Marcellinus and
German critics at the foot of the pages. On all this, I shall want your
serious advice. I am sure I shall stand or fall by the stories; and
you'll think so too, when you see those poor excrescences the two John
Knox and Women games. However, judge for yourself and be prudent on my
behalf, like a good soul.

Yes, I'll come to Cambridge then or thereabout, if God doesn't put a
real tangible spoke in my wheel.

My terms with my parents are admirable; we are a very united family.

Good-bye, _mon cher, je ne puis plus ecrire_. I have not quite got over
a damned affecting part in my story this morning. O cussed stories, they
will never affect any one but me I fear.--Ever yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. SITWELL

In the following is related Stevenson's first introduction to Mr. W.
E. Henley. The acquaintance thus formed ripened quickly, as is well
known, into a close and stimulating friendship. Of the story called
_A Country Dance_ no trace remains.

_Edinburgh, Tuesday [February 1875]._

I got your nice long gossiping letter to-day--I mean by that that there
was more news in it than usual--and so, of course, I am pretty jolly. I
am in the house, however, with such a beastly cold in the head. Our east
winds begin already to be very cold.

O, I have such a longing for children of my own; and yet I do not think
I could bear it if I had one. I fancy I must feel more like a woman than
like a man about that. I sometimes hate the children I see on the
street--you know what I mean by hate--wish they were somewhere else, and
not there to mock me; and sometimes, again, I don't know how to go by
them for the love of them, especially the very wee ones.

_Thursday._--I have been still in the house since I wrote, and I _have_
worked. I finished the Italian story; not well, but as well as I can
just now; I must go all over it again, some time soon, when I feel in
the humour to better and perfect it. And now I have taken up an old
story, begun years ago; and I have now re-written all I had written of
it then, and mean to finish it. What I have lost and gained is odd. As
far as regards simple writing, of course, I am in another world now; but
in some things, thou