reason will more rejoice over the end of a
disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more sorrow over the
stoppage of the fun. For, say what you please, it has been a deeply
interesting time. You don't know what news is, nor what politics, nor
what the life of man, till you see it on so small a scale and with your
own liberty on the board for stake. I would not have missed it for much.
And anxious friends beg me to stay at home and study human nature in
Brompton drawing-rooms! _Farceurs!_ And anyway you know that such is not
my talent. I could never be induced to take the faintest interest in
Brompton _qua_ Brompton or a drawing-room _qua_ a drawing-room. I am an
Epick Writer with a k to it, but without the necessary genius.

Hurry up with another book of stories. I am now reduced to two of my
contemporaries, you and Barrie--O, and Kipling--you and Barrie and
Kipling are now my Muses Three. And with Kipling, as you know, there are
reservations to be made. And you and Barrie don't write enough. I should
say I also read Anstey when he is serious, and can almost always get a
happy day out of Marion Crawford--_ce n'est pas toujours la guerre_, but
it's got life to it and guts, and it moves. Did you read the _Witch of
Prague_? Nobody could read it twice, of course; and the first time even
it was necessary to skip. _E pur si muove._ But Barrie is a beauty, the
_Little Minister_ and the _Window in Thrums_, eh? Stuff in that young
man; but he must see and not be too funny. Genius in him, but there's a
journalist at his elbow--there's the risk. Look, what a page is the
glove business in the _Window_! knocks a man flat; that's guts, if you
please.

Why have I wasted the little time that is left with a sort of naked
review article? I don't know, I'm sure. I suppose a mere ebullition of
congested literary talk. I am beginning to think a visit from friends
would be due. Wish you could come!

Let us have your news anyway, and forgive this silly stale
effusion.--Yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

To J. M. BARRIE

[_Vailima, December 1892._]

DEAR J. M. BARRIE,--You will be sick of me soon; I cannot help it. I
have been off my work for some time, and re-read the _Edinburgh Eleven_,
and had a great mind to write a parody and give you all your sauce back
again, and see how you would like it yourself. And then I read (for the
first time--I know not how) the _Window in Thrums_; I don't say that it
is better