of the phantom
Education. We have good word of him, and I hope he will not be in
disgrace again, as he was when the hope of the British Navy--need I say
that I refer to Admiral Burney?--honoured us last. The next time you
come, as the new house will be finished, we shall be able to offer you a
bed. Nares and Meiklejohn may like to hear that our new room is to be
big enough to dance in. It will be a very pleasant day for me to see the
_Curacoa_ in port again and at least a proper contingent of her officers
"skipping in my 'all."

We have just had a feast on my birthday at which we had three of the
Ringaroomas, and I wish they had been three Curacoas--say yourself,
Hoskin, and Burney the ever Great. (Consider this an invitation.) Our
boys had got the thing up regardless. There were two huge sows--O,
brutes of animals that would have broken down a hansom cab--four smaller
pigs, two barrels of beef, and a horror of vegetables and fowls. We sat
down between forty and fifty in a big new native house behind the
kitchen that you have never seen, and ate and public spoke till all was
blue. Then we had about half an hour's holiday with some beer and sherry
and brandy and soda to restrengthen the European heart, and then out to
the old native house to see a siva. Finally, all the guests were packed
off in a trackless black night and down a road that was rather fitted
for the _Curacoa_ than any human pedestrian, though to be sure I do not
know the draught of the _Curacoa_. My ladies one and all desire to be
particularly remembered to our friends on board, and all look forward,
as I do myself, in the hope of your return.--Yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

And let me hear from you again!

TO CHARLES BAXTER

The following extract gives a hint of Stevenson's intended management
of one of the most difficult points in the plot of _Weir of
Hermiston_.

_1st Dec. '92._

... I have a novel on the stocks to be called _The Justice-Clerk_. It is
pretty Scotch, the Grand Premier is taken from Braxfield--(Oh, by the
by, send me Cockburn's _Memorials_)--and some of the story
is--well--queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally
disappears with the other man who shot him.... Mind you, I expect _The
Justice-Clerk_ to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is already a thing of
beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone _far_ my best
character.

[_Later._]--Second thought. I wish Pitcairn's