er to you than you are to me.
I shall remain but little time
In London, as a wretched clime,
But not so wretched (for none are)
As that of beastly old Braemar.
My doctor sends me skipping. I
Have many facts to meet your eye.
My pig's snout's now upon my face;
And I inhale with fishy grace,
My gills outflapping right and left,
_Ol. pin. sylvest._ I am bereft
Of a great deal of charm by this--
Not quite the bull's eye for a kiss--
But like a gnome of olden time
Or bogey in a pantomime.
For ladies' love I once was fit,
But now am rather out of it.
Where'er I go, revolted curs
Snap round my military spurs;
The children all retire in fits
And scream their bellowses to bits.
Little I care: the worst's been done:
Now let the cold impoverished sun
Drop frozen from his orbit; let
Fury and fire, cold, wind and wet,
And cataclysmal mad reverses
Rage through the federate universes;
Let Lawson triumph, cakes and ale,
Whisky and hock and claret fail;--
Tobacco, love, and letters perish,
With all that any man could cherish:
You it may touch, not me. I dwell
Too deep already--deep in hell;
And nothing can befall, O damn!
To make me uglier than I am.

R. L. S.

This-yer refers to an ori-nasal respirator for the inhalation of
pine-wood oil, _oleum pini sylvestris_.

TO THOMAS STEVENSON

With all his throat and lung troubles actively renewed, Stevenson
fled to Davos again in October. This time he and his wife and stepson
occupied a small house by themselves, the Chalet am Stein, near the
Buol Hotel. The election to the Edinburgh Professorship was still
pending, and the following note to his father shows that he thought
for a moment of giving the electors a specimen of his qualifications
in the shape of a magazine article on the Appin murder--a theme
afterwards turned to more vital account in the tales of _Kidnapped_
and _Catriona_.

[_Chalet am Stein, Davos, October 1881._]

MY DEAR FATHER,--It occurred to me last night in bed that I could write

The Murder of Red Colin,
A Story of the Forfeited Estates.

This I have all that is necessary for, with the following exceptions:--

_Trials of the Sons of Roy Rob with Anecdotes_: Edinburgh, 1818, and

The second volume of Blackwood's Magazine.

You might also look in Arnot's _Criminal Trials_ up in my room, and see
what observations he has on the ca