he had known but
few people in Monterey, nevertheless it was a social little place in
comparison to a great city like San Francisco, where Stevenson found
himself indeed a stranger and friendless and learned for the first time
in his life what it really meant to be lonely.

Funds were running low; so he secured the cheapest possible lodging and
took his meals at various small restaurants, living at the rate of
seventy cents a day.

On December 26 he wrote: "For four days I have spoken to no one but my
landlady or landlord or the restaurant waiters. This is not a gay way to
pass Christmas, is it?" But some days later, nothing daunted, he added:
"I lead a pretty happy life, though you might not think it. I have great
fun trying to be economical, which I find as good a game of play as any
other. I have no want of occupation and though I rarely see any one to
speak to, have little time to worry."

To make matters worse, letters containing money went astray and word
came that some articles submitted to his publishers in England, on which
he had depended for funds, were not satisfactory, and this forced him to
reduce his living expenses to forty-five cents a day. The letters from
home were most unsatisfactory and lacked the kind of news he longed for.
"Not one soul ever gives me any _news_," he complained to Sidney Colvin,
"about people or things, everybody writes me sermons; it is good for me,
but hardly the food necessary for a man who lives all alone on
forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work
and many heavy thoughts. If one of you could write me a letter with a
jest in it, a letter like what is written to real people in the world--I
am still flesh and blood--I should enjoy it. Simpson did the other day,
and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine--man alive I want
gossip."

Day in and day out he worked doggedly, fighting discouragement, with
little strength or inspiration to write anything very worth while.

To cap all, his landlady's little boy fell ill, and Stevenson, who had a
great love and sympathy for all children, helped to nurse him, and this
proved too much in the nervous and exhausted state he was in. The boy
recovered, but Stevenson fell ill again, and for six weeks hovered
between life and death.

This seems to have been the turning-point in his ill luck. Toward the
middle of February, as he slowly began to mend, he was cheered on by
long letters from home, full of anx