bettered. Here he and his family lived
for the next sixteen months (March 1883 to July 1884). To the first part
of this period he often afterwards referred as the happiest time of his
life. His malady remained quiescent enough to afford, at least to his
own buoyant spirit, a strong hope of ultimate recovery. He delighted in
his surroundings, and realised for the first time the joys of a true
home of his own. The last shadow of a cloud between himself and his
parents had long passed away; and towards his father, now in declining
health, and often suffering from moods of constitutional depression, the
son begins on his part to assume, how touchingly and tenderly will be
seen from the following letters, a quasi-paternal attitude of
encouragement and monition. At the same time his work on the completion
of the _Silverado Squatters_, on _Prince Otto_, the _Child's Garden of
Verses_ (for which his own name was _Penny Whistles_), on the _Black
Arrow_ (designated hereinafter, on account of its Old English dialect,
as "tushery"), and other undertakings prospered well. In the autumn the
publication of _Treasure Island_ in book form brought with it the first
breath of popular applause. The reader will see how modest a price
Stevenson was content, nay, delighted, to receive for this classic. It
was two or three years yet before he could earn enough to support
himself and his family by literature: a thing he had always been
earnestly bent on doing, regarding it as the only justification for his
chosen way of life. In the meantime, it must be understood, whatever
help he needed from his father was from the hour of his marriage always
amply and ungrudgingly given.

In September of the same year, 1883, Stevenson had felt deeply the death
of his old friend James Walter Ferrier (see the essay _Old Mortality_
and the references in the following letters). But still his health held
out fairly, until, in January 1884, on a visit to Nice, he was
unexpectedly prostrated anew by an acute congestion of the internal
organs, which for the time being brought him to death's door. Returning
to his home, his recovery had been only partial when, after four months
(May 1884), a recurrence of violent hemorrhages from the lung once more
prostrated him completely; soon after which he quitted Hyeres, and the
epidemic of cholera which broke out there the same summer prevented all
thoughts of his return.

The Hyeres time, both during the happy and hard-work