nced it a guide-book. "Do you think it an
unusually good guide-book?" I asked, and both said, "No, not at all!"
Their grimace was a picture when I showed the original.

I trust your health and that of Mrs. Hamerton keep better; your last
account was a poor one. I was unable to make out the visit I had hoped,
as (I do not know if you heard of it) I had a very violent and dangerous
hemorrhage last spring. I am almost glad to have seen death so close
with all my wits about me, and not in the customary lassitude and
disenchantment of disease. Even thus clearly beheld I find him not so
terrible as we suppose. But, indeed, with the passing of years, the
decay of strength, the loss of all my old active and pleasant habits,
there grows more and more upon me that belief in the kindness of this
scheme of things, and the goodness of our veiled God, which is an
excellent and pacifying compensation. I trust, if your health continues
to trouble you, you may find some of the same belief. But perhaps my
fine discovery is a piece of art, and belongs to a character cowardly,
intolerant of certain feelings, and apt to self-deception. I don't think
so, however; and when I feel what a weak and fallible vessel I was
thrust into this hurly-burly, and with what marvellous kindness the wind
has been tempered to my frailties, I think I should be a strange kind of
ass to feel anything but gratitude.

I do not know why I should inflict this talk upon you; but when I summon
the rebellious pen, he must go his own way; I am no Michael Scott, to
rule the fiend of correspondence. Most days he will none of me; and when
he comes, it is to rape me where he will.--Yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO W. E. HENLEY

Stevenson was by this time beginning to realise that work at
play-writing in collaboration with Mr. Henley was doing much more to
exhaust his strength than to replenish either of their purses, and
Mr. Henley, who had built hopes of fame and fortune on their
collaboration, was very unwilling to face the fact.

[_Bournemouth, March 1885._]

MY DEAR LAD,--That is all right, and a good job. About coming down, you
cannot get into us for a while, as you may imagine; we are in desperate
vortex, and everybody 'most dead. I have been two days in bed with liver
and slight bleeding.

Do you think you are right to send _Macaire_ and the _Admiral_ about?
Not a copy have I sent, nor (speaking for myself p