The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wrong Box, by
Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

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Title: The Wrong Box

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #1585]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger

THE WRONG BOX

By Robert Louis Stevenson And Lloyd Osbourne

PREFACE

'Nothing like a little judicious levity,' says Michael Finsbury in the
text: nor can any better excuse be found for the volume in the reader's
hand. The authors can but add that one of them is old enough to be
ashamed of himself, and the other young enough to learn better.

R. L. S. L. O.

CHAPTER I. In Which Morris Suspects

How very little does the amateur, dwelling at home at ease, comprehend
the labours and perils of the author, and, when he smilingly skims the
surface of a work of fiction, how little does he consider the hours
of toil, consultation of authorities, researches in the Bodleian,
correspondence with learned and illegible Germans--in one word, the vast
scaffolding that was first built up and then knocked down, to while away
an hour for him in a railway train! Thus I might begin this tale with
a biography of Tonti--birthplace, parentage, genius probably inherited
from his mother, remarkable instance of precocity, etc--and a complete
treatise on the system to which he bequeathed his name. The material
is all beside me in a pigeon-hole, but I scorn to appear vainglorious.
Tonti is dead, and I never saw anyone who even pretended to regret him;
and, as for the tontine system, a word will suffice for all the purposes
of this unvarnished narrative.

A number of sprightly youths (the more the merrier) put up a certain sum
of money, which is then funded in a pool under trustees; coming on for
a century later, the proceeds are fluttered for a moment in the face of
the last survivor, who is probably deaf, so that he cannot even hear of
his success--and who is certainly dying, so that he might just as well
have lost. The peculiar poetry and even humour of the scheme is now
apparent, s