ave still rather bad eyes, and a nasty sore throat. I
play Orsino every day, in all the pomp of Solomon, splendid Francis the
First clothes, heavy with gold and stage jewellery. I play it ill
enough, I believe; but me and the clothes, and the wedding wherewith the
clothes and me are reconciled, produce every night a thrill of
admiration. Our cook told my mother (there is a servants' night, you
know) that she and the housemaid were "just prood to be able to say it
was oor young gentleman." To sup afterwards with these clothes on, and a
wonderful lot of gaiety and Shakespearean jokes about the table, is
something to live for. It is so nice to feel you have been dead three
hundred years, and the sound of your laughter is faint and far off in
the centuries.--Ever your faithful

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MRS. SITWELL

[_Edinburgh, April 1875._]

_Wednesday._--A moment at last. These last few days have been as jolly
as days could be, and by good fortune I leave to-morrow for Swanston, so
that I shall not feel the whole fall back to habitual self. The pride of
life could scarce go further. To live in splendid clothes, velvet and
gold and fur, upon principally champagne and lobster salad, with a
company of people nearly all of whom are exceptionally good talkers;
when your days began about eleven and ended about four--I have lost that
sentence; I give it up; it is very admirable sport, any way. Then both
my afternoons have been so pleasantly occupied--taking Henley drives. I
had a business to carry him down the long stair, and more of a business
to get him up again, but while he was in the carriage it was splendid.
It is now just the top of spring with us. The whole country is mad with
green. To see the cherry-blossom bitten out upon the black firs, and the
black firs bitten out of the blue sky, was a sight to set before a king.
You may imagine what it was to a man who has been eighteen months in an
hospital ward. The look of his face was a wine to me. He plainly has
been little in the country before. Imagine this: I always stopped him on
the Bridges to let him enjoy the great _cry_ of green that goes up to
Heaven out of the river beds, and he asked (more than once) "What noise
is that?"--"The water."--"O!" almost incredulously; and then quite a
long while after: "Do you know the noise of the water astonished me very
much?" I was much struck by his putting the question _twice_; I have
lost the sense of w