r since I can remember;

And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or contravene either of
the above conditions, I hereby revoke the donation and transfer my
rights in the said birthday to the President of the United States of
America for the time being;

In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal this nineteenth
day of June in the year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-one.

[Illustration: SEAL]

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_Witness_, LLOYD OSBOURNE,
_Witness_, HAROLD WATTS.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The misgivings herein expressed about the imminence of a native war
were not realised until two years later, and the plans of defence
into which Stevenson here enters with characteristic gusto were not
put to the test.

[_Vailima, June and July 1891._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am so hideously in arrears that I know not where to
begin. However, here I am a prisoner in my room, unfit for work,
incapable of reading with interest, and trying to catch up a bit. We
have a guest here: a welcome guest: my Sydney music master, whose health
broke down, and who came with his remarkable simplicity, to ask a
month's lodging. He is newly married, his wife in the family way:
beastly time to fall sick. I have found, by good luck, a job for him
here which will pay some of his way: and in the meantime he is a
pleasant guest, for he plays the flute with little sentiment but great
perfection, and endears himself by his simplicity. To me, especially; I
am so weary of finding people approach me with precaution, pick their
words, flatter, and twitter; but the muttons of the good God are not at
all afraid of the lion. They take him as he comes, and he does not
bite--at least not hard. This makes us a party of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, at table; deftly waited on by Mary Carter, a very nice Sydney girl,
who served us at a boarding-house and has since come on--how long she
will endure this exile is another story; and gauchely waited on by
Faauma, the new left-handed wife of the famed Lafaele, a little creature
in native dress of course and as beautiful as a bronze candlestick, so
fine, clean and dainty in every limb; her arms and her little hips in
particular masterpieces. The rest of the crew may be stated briefly: the
great Henry Simele, still to the front; King, of the yellow beard,
rather a disappointment--I am inclined on this point to republican
opinions: Ratke, a German cook, good--and Germanly