. This man is
well known to me, sits there all day, sometimes reading, sometimes
singing, sometimes distributing tracts. Bob laughed much at the
opposition preachers--I never noticed it till he called my attention to
the other; but it did not seem to me like opposition--does it to
you?--each in his way was teaching what he thought best.

Last night, after reading Walt Whitman a long while for my attempt to
write about him, I got _tete-montee_, rushed out up to M. S., came in,
took out _Leaves of Grass_, and without giving the poor unbeliever time
to object, proceeded to wade into him with favourite passages. I had at
least this triumph, that he swore he must read some more of him.--Ever
your faithful friend,

LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. SITWELL

On the question of the authorship of the _Ode to the Cuckoo_, which
Burke thought the most beautiful lyric in our language, the debate
was between the claims of John Logan, minister of South Leith
(1745-1785), and his friend and fellow-worker Michael Bruce. Those of
Logan have, I believe, been now vindicated past doubt.

_[Edinburgh], Saturday, October 4, 1873._

It is a little sharp to-day; but bright and sunny with a sparkle in the
air, which is delightful after four days of unintermitting rain. In the
streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it was plain. They
came forward with a little run and _leaped_ at each other's hands. You
never saw such bright eyes as they both had. It put one in a good humour
to see it.

_8 p.m._--I made a little more out of my work than I have made for a
long while back; though even now I cannot make things fall into
sentences--they only sprawl over the paper in bald orphan clauses. Then
I was about in the afternoon with Baxter; and we had a good deal of fun,
first rhyming on the names of all the shops we passed, and afterwards
buying needles and quack drugs from open-air vendors, and taking much
pleasure in their inexhaustible eloquence. Every now and then as we
went, Arthur's Seat showed its head at the end of a street. Now, to-day
the blue sky and the sunshine were both entirely wintry; and there was
about the hill, in these glimpses, a sort of thin, unreal, crystalline
distinctness that I have not often seen excelled. As the sun began to go
down over the valley between the new town and the old, the evening grew
resplendent; all the gardens and low-lying buildings sank back and
became almost invi