y, I accepted. Do you think I can cut it? I am
only anxious to go slick home on the Saturday. Write by return of post
and tell me what to do. If possible, I should like to cut the business
and come right slick out to Swanston.--I remain, your affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

An early Portfolio paper On _the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places_, as
well as the second part of the _Random Memories_ essay, written
twenty years later, refer to the same experiences as the following
letters. Stevenson lodged during his stay at Wick in a private hotel
on the Harbour Brae, kept by a Mr. Sutherland.[4]

_Wick, Friday, September 11, 1868._

MY DEAR MOTHER,-- ... Wick lies at the end or elbow of an open
triangular bay, hemmed on either side by shores, either cliff or steep
earth-bank, of no great height. The grey houses of Pulteney extend along
the southerly shore almost to the cape; and it is about half-way down
this shore--no, six-sevenths way down--that the new breakwater extends
athwart the bay.

Certainly Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare, grey shores, grim
grey houses, grim grey sea; not even the gleam of red tiles; not even
the greenness of a tree. The southerly heights, when I came here, were
black with people, fishers waiting on wind and night. Now all the S.Y.S.
(Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the bay, and the Wick men stay
indoors or wrangle on the quays with dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high
in brine, mud, and herring refuse. The day when the boats put out to go
home to the Hebrides, the girl here told me there was "a black wind";
and on going out, I found the epithet as justifiable as it was
picturesque. A cold, _black_ southerly wind, with occasional rising
showers of rain; it was a fine sight to see the boats beat out a-teeth
of it.

In Wick I have never heard any one greet his neighbour with the usual
"Fine day" or "Good morning." Both come shaking their heads, and both
say, "Breezy, breezy!" And such is the atrocious quality of the climate,
that the remark is almost invariably justified by the fact.

The streets are full of the Highland fishers, lubberly, stupid,
inconceivably lazy and heavy to move. You bruise against them, tumble
over them, elbow them against the wall--all to no purpose; they will not
budge; and you are forced to leave the pavement every step.

To the south, however, is as fine a piece of coast scenery as I ever
sa