MAS STEVENSON

The next is after going down to meet his wife and stepson, when the
former had left the doctor's hands at Berne.

_Chalet Buol, Davos-Platz, December 26, 1881._

MY DEAR MOTHER,--Yesterday, Sunday and Christmas, we finished this
eventful journey by a drive in an _open_ sleigh--none others were to be
had--seven hours on end through whole forests of Christmas trees. The
cold was beyond belief. I have often suffered less at a dentist's. It
was a clear, sunny day, but the sun even at noon falls, at this season,
only here and there into the Praettigau. I kept up as long as I could in
an imitation of a street singer:--

"Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses," etc.

At last Lloyd remarked, a blue mouth speaking from a corpse-coloured
face, "You seem to be the only one with any courage left?" And, do you
know, with that word my courage disappeared, and I made the rest of the
stage in the same dumb wretchedness as the others. My only terror was
lest Fanny should ask for brandy, or laudanum, or something. So awful
was the idea of putting my hands out, that I half thought I would
refuse.

Well, none of us are a penny the worse, Lloyd's cold better; I, with a
twinge of the rheumatiz; and Fanny better than her ordinary.

General conclusion between Lloyd and me as to the journey: A prolonged
visit to the dentist's, complicated with the fear of death.

Never, O never, do you get me there again.--Ever affectionate son,

R. L. S.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

Mr. Gosse and R. L. S. had proposed to Mr. R. W. Gilder, of the
Century Magazine, that they should collaborate for him on a series of
murder papers, beginning with the Elstree murder; and he had accepted
the proposal on terms which they thought liberal.

_Hotel Buol, Davos, Dec. 26, 1881._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--I have just brought my wife back, through such cold, in
an open sleigh too, as I had never fancied to exist. I won't use the
word torture, but go to your dentist's and in nine cases out of ten you
will not suffer more pain than we suffered.

This is merely in acknowledgment of your editorial: to say that I shall
give my mind at once to the Murder. But I bethink me you can say so much
and convey my sense of the liberality of our Cousins, without
exhibiting this scrawl. So I may go on to tell you that I have at last
found a publisher as eager to publish, as I am to write a Hazlitt.
Bentley is the Boy; and very