y, bless God for it, we have still the same eye to
see with, and if the scene be not altogether unsightly, we can enjoy it
whether or no. I feel quite happy, but curiously inert and passive,
something for the winds to blow over, and the sun to glimpse on and go
off again, as it might be a tree or a gravestone. All this willing and
wishing and striving leads a man nowhere after all. Here I am back again
in my old humour of a sunny equanimity; to see the world fleet about me;
and the days chase each other like sun patches, and the nights like
cloud-shadows, on a windy day; content to see them go and no wise
reluctant for the cool evening, with its dew and stars and fading strain
of tragic red. And I ask myself why I ever leave this humour? What I
have gained? And the winds blow in the trees with a sustained "Pish"!
and the birds answer me in a long derisive whistle.

So that for health, happiness, and indifferent literature, apply
to--Ever yours,

R. L. S.

TO MRS. SITWELL

"_Burns_" means the article on Burns which R. L. S. had been
commissioned to write for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The "awfully
nice man" was the Hon. J. Seed, formerly Secretary to the Customs and
Marine Department of New Zealand; and it was from his conversation
that the notion of the Samoan Islands as a place of refuge for the
sick and world-worn first entered Stevenson's mind, to lie dormant (I
never heard him speak of it) and be revived thirteen years later.

[_Edinburgh, June 1875._]

Simply a scratch. All right, jolly, well, and through with the
difficulty. My father pleased about the _Burns_. Never travel in the
same carriage with three able-bodied seamen and a fruiterer from Kent;
the A.-B.'s speak all night as though they were hailing vessels at sea;
and the fruiterer as if he were crying fruit in a noisy
market-place--such, at least, is my _funeste_ experience. I wonder if a
fruiterer from some place else--say Worcestershire--would offer the same
phenomena? insoluble doubt.

R. L. S.

_Later._--Forgive me, couldn't get it off. Awfully nice man here
to-night. Public servant--New Zealand. Telling us all about the South
Sea Islands till I was sick with desire to go there: beautiful places,
green for ever; perfect climate; perfect shapes of men and women, with
red flowers in their hair; and nothing to do but to study oratory and
etiquette, sit in the sun, and pick up the fruits as they fall