intervals before them in the big shadowy hall, with an oak
cabinet at one end of it and a group of Rodin's (which native taste
regards as _prodigieusement leste_) presiding over all from the top--and
to hear the long rambling Samoan hymn rolling up (God bless me, what
style)! But I am off business to-day, and this is not meant to be
literature.

I have asked Colvin to send you a copy of _Catriona_, which I am
sometimes tempted to think is about my best work. I hear word
occasionally of the _Amazing Marriage_. It will be a brave day for me
when I get hold of it. Gower Woodseer is now an ancient, lean, grim,
exiled Scot, living and labouring as for a wager in the tropics; still
active, still with lots of fire in him, but the youth--ah, the youth
where is it? For years after I came here, the critics (those genial
gentlemen) used to deplore the relaxation of my fibre and the idleness
to which I had succumbed. I hear less of this now; the next thing is
they will tell me I am writing myself out! and that my unconscientious
conduct is bringing their grey hairs with sorrow to the dust. I do not
know--I mean I do know one thing. For fourteen years I have not had a
day's real health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have
done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of
it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by
coughing, written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long, it
seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove. I am better now,
have been rightly speaking since first I came to the Pacific; and still,
few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the battle
goes on--ill or well, is a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a
contest, and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield should be
this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle. At least I
have not failed, but I would have preferred a place of trumpetings and
the open air over my head.

This is a devilish egotistical yarn. Will you try to imitate me in that
if the spirit ever moves you to reply? And meantime be sure that away in
the midst of the Pacific there is a house on a wooded island where the
name of George Meredith is very dear, and his memory (since it must be
no more) is continually honoured.--Ever your friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Remember me to Mariette, if you please; and my wife sends her most kind
remembrances to yourself.

R