chuckling in the warehouse of the German firm, for some days
longer; and hear me meanwhile on the golden letters.

Alas! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is prohibitive. I
cannot do it. It is another day-dream burst. Another gable of Abbotsford
has gone down, fortunately before it was builded, so there's nobody
injured--except me. I had a strong conviction that I was a great hand
at writing inscriptions, and meant to exhibit and test my genius on the
walls of my house; and now I see I can't. It is generally thus. The
Battle of the Golden Letters will never be delivered. On making
preparation to open the campaign, the King found himself face to face
with invincible difficulties, in which the rapacity of a mercenary
soldiery and the complaints of an impoverished treasury played an equal
part.--Ever yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

I enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find your
letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request you to pay for the
bronze letters yourself and let me know the damage.

R. L. S.

TO JAMES S. STEVENSON

_Vailima Plantation, Island of Upolu, Samoa, Sept. 4th, 1893._

MY DEAR COUSIN,--I thank you cordially for your kinsmanlike reply to my
appeal. Already the notes from the family Bible have spared me one
blunder, which I had from some notes in my grandfather's own hand; and
now, like the daughters of the horseleech, my voice is raised again to
put you to more trouble. "Nether Carsewell, Neilston," I read. My
knowledge of Scotland is fairly wide, but it does not include Neilston.

However, I find by the (original) Statistical Account, it is a parish in
Renfrew. Do you know anything of it? Have you identified Nether
Carsewell? Have the Neilston parish registers been searched? I see whole
vistas of questions arising, and here am I in Samoa!

I shall write by this mail to my lawyer to have the records searched,
and to my mother to go and inquire in the parish itself. But perhaps you
may have some further information, and if so I should be glad of it. If
you have not, pray do not trouble to answer. As to your father's blunder
of "Stevenson of Cauldwell," it is now explained: _Carse_well may have
been confounded with _Cauldwell_: and it seems likely our man may have
been a tenant or retainer of Mure of Cauldwell, a very ancient and
honourable family, who seems to have been at least a neighbouring laird
to the parish of Neilston. I was jus