actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I
hesitate to take. What, then, to do with them? My neighbour's vineyard,
pardy! It is a rich, villa, pleasure-garden of course; if it were a
peasant's patch, the snails, I suppose, would have to perish.

The weather these last three days has been much better, though it is
still windy and unkind. I keep splendidly well, and am cruelly busy,
with mighty little time even for a walk. And to write at all, under such
pressure, must be held to lean to virtue's side.

My financial prospects are shining. O if the health will hold, I should
easily support myself.--Your ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

_La Solitude, Hyeres-les-Palmiers, Var [May 20, 1883]._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--I enclose the receipt and the corrections. As for your
letter and Gilder's, I must take an hour or so to think; the matter much
importing--to me. The L40 was a heavenly thing.

I send the MS. by Henley, because he acts for me in all matters, and had
the thing, like all my other books, in his detention. He is my unpaid
agent--an admirable arrangement for me, and one that has rather more
than doubled my income on the spot.

If I have been long silent, think how long you were so and blush, sir,
blush.

I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque, and, like Pepys,
"my hand still shakes to write of it." To this grateful emotion, and not
to D.T., please attribute the raggedness of my hand.

This year I should be able to live and keep my family on my own
earnings, and that in spite of eight months and more of perfect idleness
at the end of last and beginning of this. It is a sweet thought.

This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial. I sing daily with
my Bunyan, that great bard,

"I dwell already the next door to Heaven!"

If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-marigolds, and my
olives, and my view over a plain, and my view of certain mountains as
graceful as Apollo, as severe as Zeus, you would not think the phrase
exaggerated.

It is blowing to-day a _hot_ mistral, which is the devil or a near
connection of his.

This to catch the post.--Yours affectionately,

R. L. STEVENSON.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

_La Solitude, Hyeres-les-Palmiers, Var, France, May 21, 1883._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--The night giveth advice, generally bad advice; but I
have taken it. And I have written direct to Gilder to tell