d to keep an eye on this distracted
people. I live just now wholly alone in an upper room of my house,
because the whole family are down with influenza, bar my wife and
myself. I get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon and have a ride in
the woods; and I sit here and smoke and write, and rewrite, and destroy,
and rage at my own impotence, from six in the morning till eight at
night, with trifling and not always agreeable intervals for meals.

I am sure you chose wisely to keep your country charge. There a minister
can be something, not in a town. In a town, the most of them are empty
houses--and public speakers. Why should you suppose your book will be
slated because you have no friends? A new writer, if he is any good,
will be acclaimed generally with more noise than he deserves. But by
this time you will know for certain.--I am, yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_P.S._--Be it known to this fluent generation that I, R. L. S., in the
forty-third of my age and the twentieth of my professional life, wrote
twenty-four pages in twenty-one days, working from six to eleven, and
again in the afternoon from two to four or so, without fail or
interruption. Such are the gifts the gods have endowed us withal: such
was the facility of this prolific writer!

R. L. S.

TO AUGUSTUS ST. GAUDENS

_Vailima, Samoa, May 29th, 1893._

MY DEAR GOD-LIKE SCULPTOR,--I wish in the most delicate manner in the
world to insinuate a few commissions:--

No. 1. Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as gilt-edged and
high-toned as it is possible to make them. One is for our house here,
and should be addressed as above. The other is for my friend Sidney
Colvin, and should be addressed--Sidney Colvin, Esq., Keeper of the
Print Room, British Museum, London.

No. 2. This is a rather large order, and demands some explanation. Our
house is lined with varnished wood of a dark ruddy colour, very
beautiful to see; at the same time, it calls very much for gold; there
is a limit to picture frames, and really you know there has to be a
limit to the pictures you put inside of them. Accordingly, we have had
an idea of a certain kind of decoration, which, I think, you might help
us to make practical. What we want is an alphabet of gilt letters (very
much such as people play with), and all mounted on spikes like
drawing-pins; say two spikes to each letter, one at top, and I one at
bottom. Say that they were this heigh