ems really to be going to succeed, which is a pleasant
prospect on all sides. I am, I believe, floated financially; a book that
sells will be a pleasant novelty. I enclose another review; mighty
complimentary, and calculated to sell the book too.

Coolin's tombstone has been got out, honest man! and it is to be
polished, for it has got scratched, and have a touch of gilding in the
letters, and be sunk in the front of the house. Worthy man, he, too,
will maybe weary for the heather, and the bents of Gullane, where (as I
dare say you remember) he gaed clean gyte, and jumped on to his crown
from a gig, in hot and hopeless chase of many thousand rabbits. I can
still hear the little cries of the honest fellow as he disappeared; and
my mother will correct me, but I believe it was two days before he
turned up again at North Berwick: to judge by his belly, he had caught
not one out of these thousands, but he had had some exercise.

I keep well.--Ever your affectionate son,

R. L. S.

TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM

Anticipating the gift of a cupboard and answering the questions set
in his last. The date of the readings had been his seventh year. Mr.
Galpin was a partner in Cassell, Petter, Galpin, & Co.

[_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, July or August 1886._]

MY DEAR CUMMY,--The cupboard has not yet turned up, and I was hanging on
to be able to say it had. However, that is only a trick to escape
another letter, and I should despise myself if I kept it up. It was
truly kind of you, dear Cummy, to send it to us: and I will let you know
where we set it and how it looks.

Carus Rearn and Andrew Silex and the others were from a story you read
me in Cassell's Family Paper, and which I have been reading again and
found by no means a bad story. Mr. Galpin lent me all the old volumes,
and I mean to re-read Custaloga also, but have not yet. It was strangely
like old times to read the other; don't you remember the poisoning with
mushrooms? That was Andrew Silex.--Yours most affectionately,

R. L. S.

TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON

Having given up going to Scotland for a summer change, Stevenson had
started on the "outing" which he mentions in the last letter. It took
the shape of a ten days' visit to my house at the British Museum,
followed by another made in the company of Mr. Henley to Paris,
chiefly for the sake of seeing the W. H. Lows and the sculptor Rodin.

_British Museum [Augu