her shoot.--Yours
testimonially,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

I surely need not add, dear lad, that if you don't feel like it, you
will only have to pacify me by a long letter on general subjects, when I
shall hasten to respond in recompense for my assault upon the postal
highway.

TO CHARLES J. GUTHRIE

The next two letters are addressed to an old friend and fellow-member
of the Speculative Society, who had passed Advocate six years before,
on the same day as R. L. S. himself, and is now Lord Guthrie, a
Senator of the Scottish Courts of Justice, and has Swanston Cottage,
sacred to the memory of R. L. S., for his summer home.

_Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry, June 30, 1881._

MY DEAR GUTHRIE,--I propose to myself to stand for Mackay's chair. I can
promise that I will not spare to work. If you can see your way to help
me, I shall be glad; and you may at least not mind making my candidature
known.--Believe me, yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO CHARLES J. GUTHRIE

_Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry, July 2nd, 1881._

MY DEAR GUTHRIE,--Many thanks for your support, and many more for the
kindness and thoughtfulness of your letter. I shall take your advice in
both directions; presuming that by "electors" you mean the curators. I
must see to this soon; and I feel it would also do no harm to look in
at the P.H.[36] As soon then as I get through with a piece of work that
both sits upon me like a stone and attracts me like a piece of travel, I
shall come to town and go a-visiting. Testimonial-hunting is a queer
form of sport--but has its pleasures.

If I got that chair, the Spec. would have a warm defender near at hand!
The sight of your fist made me Speculative on the past.--Yours most
sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

_Kinnaird Cottage, Pitlochry [July 1881]._

MY DEAR WEG,--Many thanks for the testimonial; many thanks for your
blind, wondering letter; many wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery.
Insomnia is the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings with it a
nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome, and ungentle somnolence,
fruitful in heavy heads and heavy eyes at morning. You cannot sleep;
well, I can best explain my state thus: I cannot wake. Sleep, like the
lees of a posset, lingers all day, lead-heavy, in my knees and ankles.
Weight on the shoulders, torpor on the brain. And there is more than too
much of