er, and I did not think it could be so much increased as
you have now increased it. I was long in your debt and deep in your debt
for many poems that I shall never forget, and for _Sigurd_ before all,
and now you have plunged me beyond payment by the Saga Library. And so
now, true to human nature, being plunged beyond payment, I come and bark
at your heels.

For surely, Master, that tongue that we write, and that you have
illustrated so nobly, is yet alive. She has her rights and laws, and is
our mother, our queen, and our instrument. Now in that living tongue
_where_ has one sense, _whereas_ another. In the _Heathslayings Story_,
p. 241, line 13, it bears one of its ordinary senses. Elsewhere and
usually through the two volumes, which is all that has yet reached me of
this entrancing publication, _whereas_ is made to figure for _where_.

For the love of God, my dear and honoured Morris, use _where_, and let
us know _whereas_ we are, wherefore our gratitude shall grow, whereby
you shall be the more honoured wherever men love clear language, whereas
now, although we honour, we are troubled.

Whereunder, please find inscribed to this very impudent but yet very
anxious document, the name of one of the most distant but not the
youngest or the coldest of those who honour you

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. CHARLES FAIRCHILD

The projected visit of Mr. Kipling, with his wife and brother-in-law,
to Samoa, which is mentioned towards the close of this letter, never
took place, much to the regret of both authors.

[_Vailima, March 1892._]

MY DEAR MRS. FAIRCHILD,--I am guilty in your sight, but my affairs
besiege me. The chief-justiceship of a family of nineteen persons is in
itself no sinecure, and sometimes occupies me for days: two weeks ago
for four days almost entirely, and for two days entirely. Besides which,
I have in the last few months written all but one chapter of a _History
of Samoa_ for the last eight or nine years; and while I was unavoidably
delayed in the writing of this, awaiting material, put in one-half of
_David Balfour_, the sequel to _Kidnapped_. Add the ordinary impediments
of life, and admire my busyness. I am now an old, but healthy skeleton,
and degenerate much towards the machine. By six at work: stopped at
half-past ten to give a history lesson to a step-grandson; eleven,
lunch; after lunch we have a musical performance till two; then to work
again; bath, 4.40; di