The Project Gutenberg eBook, Prince Otto, by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Title: Prince Otto
a Romance

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Release Date: September 3, 2010 [eBook #372]
First Posted: November 25, 1995

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCE OTTO***

Transcribed from the 1905 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

PRINCE OTTO--A ROMANCE

A ROMANCE

BY

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

[Picture: Decorative graphic]

A NEW EDITION

* * * * *

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1905

TO NELLY VAN DE GRIFT
(MRS. ADULFO SANCHEZ, OF MONTEREY)

At last, after so many years, I have the pleasure of re-introducing you
to 'Prince Otto,' whom you will remember a very little fellow, no bigger
in fact than a few sheets of memoranda written for me by your kind hand.
The sight of his name will carry you back to an old wooden house
embowered in creepers; a house that was far gone in the respectable
stages of antiquity and seemed indissoluble from the green garden in
which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in its younger days, and
had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly of a ship, and might have
heard the seamen stamping and shouting and the note of the boatswain's
whistle. It will recall to you the nondescript inhabitants now so widely
scattered:--the two horses, the dog, and the four cats, some of them
still looking in your face as you read these lines;--the poor lady, so
unfortunately married to an author;--the China boy, by this time,
perhaps, baiting his line by the banks of a river in the Flowery
Land;--and in particular the Scot who was then sick apparently unto
death, and whom you did so much to cheer and keep in good behaviour.

You may remember that he was full of ambitions and designs: so soon as he
had his health again completely,