a poem too, and
has been quite a long while written, but I do not mean you to see it
till you get the book; keep the jelly for the last, you know, as you
would often recommend in former days, so now you can take your own
medicine.

I am very sorry to hear you have been so poorly; I have been very well;
it used to be quite the other way, used it not? Do you remember making
the whistle at Mount Chessie? I do not think it _was_ my knife; I
believe it was yours; but rhyme is a very great monarch, and goes before
honesty, in these affairs at least. Do you remember, at Warriston, one
autumn Sunday, when the beech nuts were on the ground, seeing heaven
open? I would like to make a rhyme of that, but cannot.

Is it not strange to think of all the changes: Bob, Cramond, Delhi,
Minnie, and Henrietta, all married, and fathers and mothers, and your
humble servant just the one point better off? And such a little while
ago all children together! The time goes swift and wonderfully even; and
if we are no worse than we are, we should be grateful to the power that
guides us. For more than a generation I have now been to the fore in
this rough world, and been most tenderly helped, and done cruelly wrong,
and yet escaped; and here I am still, the worse for wear, but with some
fight in me still, and not unthankful--no, surely not unthankful, or I
were then the worst of human things!

My little dog is a very much better child in every way, both more loving
and more amiable; but he is not fond of strangers, and is, like most of
his kind, a great, specious humbug.

Fanny has been ill, but is much better again; she now goes donkey rides
with an old woman, who compliments her on her French. That old
woman--seventy odd--is in a parlous spiritual state.

Pretty soon, in the new sixpenny illustrated magazine, Wogg's picture is
to appear: this is a great honour! And the poor soul, whose vanity would
just explode if he could understand it, will never be a bit the
wiser!--With much love, in which Fanny joins, believe me, your
affectionate boy,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

The reference is to Mr. Gosse's volume called _Seventeenth Century
Studies_.

[_Hyeres or Royat, Summer 1883._]

MY DEAR GOSSE,--I have now leisurely read your volume; pretty soon, by
the way, you will receive one of mine.

It is a pleasant, instructive, and scholarly volume. The three best
being, quite out of sight--Crashaw, Otw