een fatal to a narrative, do not amount among them to exhibit one flaw
in this masterpiece of drama. For the drama, it is perfect; though such
a fable in a romance might make the reader crack his sides, so
imperfect, so ethereally slight is the verisimilitude required of these
conventional, rigid, and egg-dancing arts.

I was sorry to see no more of you; but shall conclude by hoping for
better luck next time. My wife begs to be remembered to both of
you.--Yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO W. E. HENLEY

The "Arabs" mentioned below are the stories comprised in the volume
_More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter_, written by Stevenson and
his wife in collaboration.

_Wensleydale, Bournemouth, November 1884._

DEAR HENLEY,--We are all to pieces in health, and heavily handicapped
with Arabs. I have a dreadful cough, whose attacks leave me _aetat_. 90.
I never let up on the Arabs, all the same, and rarely get less than
eight pages out of hand, though hardly able to come downstairs for
twittering knees.

I shall put in ----'s letter. He says so little of his circumstances
that I am in an impossibility to give him advice more specific than a
copybook. Give him my love, however, and tell him it is the mark of the
parochial gentleman who has never travelled to find all wrong in a
foreign land. Let him hold on, and he will find one country as good as
another; and in the meanwhile let him resist the fatal British tendency
to communicate his dissatisfaction with a country to its inhabitants.
'Tis a good idea, but it somehow fails to please. In a fortnight, if I
can keep my spirit in the box at all, I should be nearly through this
Arabian desert; so can tackle something fresh.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO W. H. LOW

It was some twenty months since the plan of publishing the _Child's
Garden_ in the first instance as a picture-book had been mooted (see
above, pp. 18, foll.). But it had never taken effect, and in the
following March the volume appeared without illustrations in England,
and also, I believe, in America.

_Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park, Bournemouth, Hants, England,
First week in November, I guess, 1884._

MY DEAR LOW,--Now, look here, the above is my address for three months,
I hope; continue, on your part, if you please, to write to Edinburgh,
which is safe; but if Mrs. Low thinks of coming to England, she might
take a run dow