should be in a better trim to enjoy filthy streets and
people and cold grim weather; but I don't much feel as if it was what I
would have chosen. I am tempted every day of my life to go off on
another walking tour. I like that better than anything else that I
know.--Ever your faithful friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_Fontainebleau_ is the paper called _Forest Notes_ which appeared in
the Cornhill Magazine in May of this year (reprinted in _Essays of
Travel_). The _Winter's Walk_, as far as it goes one of the most
charming of his essays of the Road, was for some reason never
finished; reprinted _ibidem_.

[_Edinburgh, February 1876._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--_1st_. I have sent _Fontainebleau_ long ago, long ago.
And Leslie Stephen is worse than tepid about it--liked "some parts" of
it "very well," the son of Belial. Moreover, he proposes to shorten it;
and I, who want _money_, and money soon, and not glory and the
illustration of the English language, I feel as if my poverty were going
to consent.

_2nd._ I'm as fit as a fiddle after my walk. I am four inches bigger
about the waist than last July! There, that's your prophecy did that. I
am on _Charles of Orleans_ now, but I don't know where to send him.
Stephen obviously spews me out of his mouth, and I spew him out of mine,
so help me! A man who doesn't like my _Fontainebleau_! His head must be
turned.

_3rd._ If ever you do come across my _Spring_ (I beg your pardon for
referring to it again, but I don't want you to forget) send it off at
once.

_4th._ I went to Ayr, Maybole, Girvan, Ballantrae, Stranraer, Glenluce,
and Wigton. I shall make an article of it some day soon, _A Winter's
Walk in Carrick and Galloway_. I had a good time.--Yours,

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

"Baynes" in the following is Stevenson's good friend and mine, the
late Professor Spencer Baynes, who was just relinquishing the
editorship of the Encyclopaedia Britannica by reason of ill-health.

[_Swanston, July 1876._]

Here I am, here, and very well too. I am glad you liked _Walking Tours_;
I like it, too; I think it's prose; and I own with contrition that I
have not always written prose. However, I am "endeavouring after new
obedience" (Scot. Shorter Catechism). You don't say aught of _Forest
Notes_, which is kind. There is one, if you will, that was too sweet to
be wholesome.

I am at Charles d'Orleans. A