ot to say much more. It
will be to me a great pride to write a notice of him: the last I can now
do. What more in any way I can do for you, please to think and let me
know. For his sake and for your own, I would not be a useless friend: I
know, you know me a most warm one; please command me or my wife, in any
way. Do not trouble to write to me; Austin, I have no doubt, will do so,
if you are, as I fear you will be, unfit.

My heart is sore for you. At least you know what you have been to him;
how he cherished and admired you; how he was never so pleased as when he
spoke of you; with what a boy's love, up to the last, he loved you. This
surely is a consolation. Yours is the cruel part--to survive; you must
try and not grudge to him his better fortune, to go first. It is the sad
part of such relations that one must remain and suffer; I cannot see my
poor Jenkin without you. Nor you indeed without him; but you may try to
rejoice that he is spared that extremity. Perhaps I (as I was so much
his confidant) know even better than you can do what your loss would
have been to him; he never spoke of you but his face changed; it
was--you were--his religion.

I write by this post to Austin and to the Academy.--Yours most
sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. FLEEMING JENKIN

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, June 1885_.]

MY DEAR MRS. JENKIN,--I should have written sooner, but we are in a
bustle, and I have been very tired, though still well. Your very kind
note was most welcome to me. I shall be very much pleased to have you
call me Louis, as he has now done for so many years. Sixteen, you say?
is it so long? It seems too short now; but of that we cannot judge, and
must not complain.

I wish that either I or my wife could do anything for you; when we can,
you will, I am sure, command us.

I trust that my notice gave you as little pain as was possible. I found
I had so much to say, that I preferred to keep it for another place and
make but a note in the Academy. To try to draw my friend at greater
length, and say what he was to me and his intimates, what a good
influence in life and what an example, is a desire that grows upon me.
It was strange, as I wrote the note, how his old tests and criticisms
haunted me; and it reminded me afresh with every few words how much I
owe to him.

I had a note from Henley, very brief and very sad. We none of us yet
feel the loss; but we know what he would have said and