ly since.
I have just made a delightful dinner by myself in the Cafe Felix, where
I am an old established beggar, and am just smoking a cigar over my
coffee. I came last night from Autun, and I am muddled about my plans.
The world is such a dance!--Ever your affectionate son,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO W. E. HENLEY

Stevenson, hard at work upon _Providence and the Guitar_, _New
Arabian Nights_, and _Travels with a Donkey_, was at this time
occupying for a few days my rooms at Trinity in my absence. The
college buildings and gardens, the ideal setting and careful tutelage
of English academic life--in these respects so strongly contrasted
with the Scottish--affected him always with a sense of unreality. The
gyp mentioned is the present head porter of the college.

[_Trinity College, Cambridge, Autumn 1878._]

MY DEAR HENLEY,--Here I am living like a fighting-cock, and have not
spoken to a real person for about sixty hours. Those who wait on me are
not real. The man I know to be a myth, because I have seen him acting so
often in the Palais Royal. He plays the Duke in _Tricoche et Cacolet_; I
knew his nose at once. The part he plays here is very dull for him, but
conscientious. As for the bedmaker, she's a dream, a kind of cheerful,
innocent nightmare; I never saw so poor an imitation of humanity. I
cannot work--_cannot_. Even the _Guitar_ is still undone; I can only
write ditch-water. 'Tis ghastly; but I am quite cheerful, and that is
more important. Do you think you could prepare the printers for a
possible breakdown this week? I shall try all I know on Monday; but if I
can get nothing better than I got this morning, I prefer to drop a week.
Telegraph to me if you think it necessary. I shall not leave till
Wednesday at soonest. Shall write again.

R. L. S.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

The matter of the loan and its repayment, here touched on, comes up
again in Stevenson's last letter of all, that which closes the book.
Stevenson and Mr. Gosse had planned a joint book of old murder
stories retold, and had been to visit the scene of one famous murder
together.

_[Edinburgh, April 16, 1879] Pool of Siloam, by El Dorado,
Delectable Mountains, Arcadia._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--Herewith of the dibbs--a homely fiver. How, and why, do
you continue to exist? I do so ill, but for a variety of reasons. First,
I wait an angel to come down and trouble the wa