simply in pieces and
about half deleted, will act some day: such is my opinion. I can no
more.--Yours ever,

R. L. S.

TO WILLIAM ARCHER

An anonymous review of the _Child's Garden_, appearing in March, gave
R. L. S. so much pleasure that he wrote (in the four words, "Now who
are you?") to inquire the name of its writer, and learned that it
was Mr. Archer; with whom he had hitherto had no acquaintance. He
thereupon entered into friendly correspondence with his critic.

_Bournemouth, March 29, 1885._

DEAR MR. ARCHER,--Yes, I have heard of you and read some of your work;
but I am bound in particular to thank you for the notice of my verses.
"There," I said, throwing it over to the friend who was staying with me,
"it's worth writing a book to draw an article like that." Had you been
as hard upon me as you were amiable, I try to tell myself I should have
been no blinder to the merits of your notice. For I saw there, to admire
and to be very grateful for, a most sober, agile pen; an enviable touch;
the marks of a reader, such as one imagines for one's self in dreams,
thoughtful, critical, and kind; and to put the top on this memorial
column, a greater readiness to describe the author criticised than to
display the talents of his censor.

I am a man _blase_ to injudicious praise (though I hope some of it may
be judicious too), but I have to thank you for THE BEST CRITICISM I EVER
HAD; and am therefore, dear Mr. Archer, the most grateful critickee now
extant.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_P.S._--I congratulate you on living in the corner of all London that I
like best. _A propos_, you are very right about my voluntary aversion
from the painful sides of life. My childhood was in reality a very mixed
experience, full of fever, nightmare, insomnia, painful days and
interminable nights; and I can speak with less authority of gardens than
of that other "land of counterpane." But to what end should we renew
these sorrows? The sufferings of life may be handled by the very
greatest in their hours of insight; it is of its pleasures that our
common poems should be formed; these are the experiences that we should
seek to recall or to provoke; and I say with Thoreau, "What right have I
to complain, who have not ceased to wonder?" and, to add a rider of my
own, who have no remedy to offer.

R. L. S.

TO MR. AND MRS. JOSEPH PENNELL

Acknowledging the dedication of an illustr