him to keep
the book[4] back and go on with it in November at his leisure. I do not
know if this will come in time; if it doesn't, of course things will go
on in the way proposed. The L40, or, as I prefer to put it, the 1000
francs, has been such a piercing sun-ray as my whole grey life is gilt
withal. On the back of it I can endure. If these good days of Longman
and the Century only last, it will be a very green world, this that we
dwell in and that philosophers miscall. I have no taste for that
philosophy; give me large sums paid on the receipt of the MS. and
copyright reserved, and what do I care about the non-beent? Only I know
it can't last. The devil always has an imp or two in every house, and my
imps are getting lively. The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet,
excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her wooden eye
upon me. I fall prone; spare me, Mother Nemesis! But catch her!

I must now go to bed; for I have had a whoreson influenza cold, and have
to lie down all day, and get up only to meals and the delights, June
delights, of business correspondence.

You said nothing about my subject for a poem. Don't you like it? My own
fishy eye has been fixed on it for prose, but I believe it could be
thrown out finely in verse, and hence I resign and pass the hand. Twig
the compliment?--Yours affectionately,

R. L. S.

TO W. E. HENLEY

"Tushery" had been a name in use between Stevenson and Mr. Henley for
romances of the _Ivanhoe_ type. He now applies it to his own tale of
the Wars of the Roses, _The Black Arrow_, written for Mr. Henderson's
Young Folks, of which the office was in Red Lion Court.

[Hyeres, May 1883.]

... The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am
headachy. So, as my good Red Lion Courier begged me for another
Butcher's Boy--I turned me to--what thinkest 'ou?--to Tushery, by the
mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so
free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. _The
Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest_ is his name: tush! a poor thing!

Will _Treasure Island_ proofs be coming soon, think you?

I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength
and masterfulness that begot John Silver in _Treasure Island_. Of
course, he is not in any other quality or feature the least like you;
but the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was
ent