that I chose just the kind of
name-daughter I wanted. For I can draw too, or rather I mean to say I
could before I forgot how; and I am very far from being a fool myself,
however much I may look it; and I am as beautiful as the day, or at
least I once hoped that perhaps I might be going to be. And so I might.
So that you see we are well met, and peers on these important points. I
am very glad also that you are older than your sister. So should I have
been, if I had had one. So that the number of points and virtues which
you have inherited from your name-father is already quite surprising.

I wish you would tell your father--not that I like to encourage my
rival--that we have had a wonderful time here of late, and that they are
having a cold day on Mulinuu, and the consuls are writing reports, and I
am writing to the Times, and if we don't get rid of our friends this
time I shall begin to despair of everything but my name-daughter.

You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on your age. From
the moment the deed was registered (as it was in the public press with
every solemnity), the 13th of November became your own _and only_
birthday, and you ceased to have been born on Christmas Day. Ask your
father: I am sure he will tell you this is sound law. You are thus
become a month and twelve days younger than you were, but will go on
growing older for the future in the regular and human manner from one
13th November to the next. The effect on me is more doubtful; I may, as
you suggest, live for ever; I might, on the other hand, come to pieces
like the one-horse shay at a moment's notice; doubtless the step was
risky, but I do not the least regret that which enables me to sign
myself your revered and delighted name-father,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO CHARLES BAXTER

[_Vailima, November 1891._]

DEAR CHARLES,--[After dealing with some matters of business] I believe
that's a'. By this time, I suppose you will have heard from McClure, and
the _Beach of Falesa_ will be decided on for better for worse. The end
of _The Wrecker_ goes by this mail, an awfae relief. I am now free and
can do what I please. What do I please? I kenna. I'll bide a wee.
There's a child's history in the wind; and there's my grandfather's life
begun; and there's a hist^{ry} of Samoa in the last four or five years
begun--there's a kind of sense to this book; it may help the Samoans, it
may help me, for I am bound on the alta