e day, if
I still live, make out the trip again and let us hob-a-nob with our grey
pows on my verandah.--Yours sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

The latter part of this letter was written in the course of an
expedition on which Stevenson had been invited by the American
Consul, Mr. Sewall, to the neighbouring island of Tutuila. Unluckily
the letter breaks off short, and the only record of this trip occurs
in the diary partly quoted in Mr. Balfour's _Life_, ch. xiv.

_Vailima, Friday, March 19th [1891]._

MY DEAR S. C.,--You probably expect that now I am back at Vailima I
shall resume the practice of the diary letter. A good deal is changed.
We are more; solitude does not attend me as before; the night is passed
playing Van John for shells; and, what is not less important, I have
just recovered from a severe illness, and am easily tired.

I will give you to-day. I sleep now in one of the lower rooms of the new
house, where my wife has recently joined me. We have two beds, an empty
case for a table, a chair, a tin basin, a bucket and a jug; next door in
the dining-room, the carpenters camp on the floor, which is covered with
their mosquito nets. Before the sun rises, at 5.45 or 5.50, Paul brings
me tea, bread, and a couple of eggs; and by about six I am at work. I
work in bed--my bed is of mats, no mattress, sheets, or filth--mats, a
pillow, and a blanket--and put in some three hours. It was 9.5 this
morning when I set off to the stream-side to my weeding; where I toiled,
manuring the ground with the best enricher, human sweat, till the
conch-shell was blown from our verandah at 10.30. At eleven we dine;
about half-past twelve I tried (by exception) to work again, could make
nothing on't, and by one was on my way to the weeding, where I wrought
till three. Half-past five is our next meal, and I read Flaubert's
Letters till the hour came round; dined, and then, Fanny having a cold,
and I being tired, came over to my den in the unfinished house, where I
now write to you, to the tune of the carpenters' voices, and by the
light--I crave your pardon--by the twilight of three vile candles
filtered through the medium of my mosquito bar. Bad ink being of the
party, I write quite blindfold, and can only hope you may be granted to
read that which I am unable to see while writing.

I said I was tired; it is a mild phrase; my back aches like toothache;
when I shut my eyes