ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO S. R. CROCKETT

[_Saranac Lake, Spring 1888_].

DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK,--For O, man, I cannae read
your name!--That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter
sits on my conscience badly. The fact is I let my correspondence
accumulate until I am going to leave a place; and then I pitch in,
overhaul the pile, and my cries of penitence might be heard a mile
about. Yesterday I despatched thirty-five belated letters: conceive the
state of my conscience, above all as the Sins of Omission (see boyhood's
guide, the Shorter Catechism) are in my view the only serious ones; I
call it my view, but it cannot have escaped you that it was also
Christ's. However, all that is not to the purpose, which is to thank you
for the sincere pleasure afforded by your charming letter. I get a good
few such; how few that please me at all, you would be surprised to
learn--or have a singularly just idea of the dulness of our race; how
few that please me as yours did, I can tell you in one word--_None_. I
am no great kirkgoer, for many reasons--and the sermon's one of them,
and the first prayer another, but the chief and effectual reason is the
stuffiness. I am no great kirkgoer, says I, but when I read yon letter
of yours, I thought I would like to sit under ye. And then I saw ye were
to send me a bit buik, and says I, I'll wait for the bit buik, and then
I'll mebbe can read the man's name, and anyway I'll can kill twa birds
wi' ae stane. And, man! the buik was ne'er heard tell o'!

That fact is an adminicle of excuse for my delay.

And now, dear minister of the illegible name, thanks to you, and
greeting to your wife, and may you have good guidance in your difficult
labours, and a blessing on your life.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

(No just sae young's he was, though--
I'm awfae near forty, man.)
Address c/o Charles Scribner's Sons,
743 Broadway, New York.

Don't put "N.B." in your paper: put SCOTLAND, and be done with it. Alas,
that I should be thus stabbed in the home of my friends! The name of my
native land is not NORTH BRITAIN, whatever may be the name of yours.

R. L. S.

TO MISS FERRIER

[_Saranac Lake, April 1888._]

MY DEAREST COGGIE,--I wish I could find the letter I began to you some
time ago when I was ill; but I can't and I don't believe there was much
in it anyway. We have all behaved like pigs an