and make and
mar and murder the works of poor scribblers, why you should not do work
of the best order. The tides have borne away my sentence, of which I was
weary at any rate, and between authors I may allow myself so much
freedom as to leave it pending. We are both Scots besides, and I suspect
both rather Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness tends to intermittency, but
is at times erisypelitous--if that be rightly spelt. Lastly, I have
gathered we had both made our stages in the metropolis of the winds: our
Virgil's "grey metropolis," and I count that a lasting bond. No place so
brands a man.

Finally, I feel it a sort of duty to you to report progress. This may be
an error, but I believed I detected your hand in an article--it may be
an illusion, it may have been by one of those industrious insects who
catch up and reproduce the handling of each emergent man--but I'll still
hope it was yours--and hope it may please you to hear that the
continuation of _Kidnapped_ is under way. I have not yet got to Alan, so
I do not know if he is still alive, but David seems to have a kick or
two in his shanks. I was pleased to see how the Anglo-Saxon theory fell
into the trap: I gave my Lowlander a Gaelic name, and even commented on
the fact in the text; yet almost all critics recognised in David and
Alan a Saxon and a Celt. I know not about England; in Scotland at least,
where Gaelic was spoken in Fife little over the century ago, and in
Galloway not much earlier, I deny that there exists such a thing as a
pure Saxon, and I think it more than questionable if there be such a
thing as a pure Celt.

But what have you to do with this? and what have I? Let us continue to
inscribe our little bits of tales, and let the heathen rage!--Yours,
with sincere interest in your career,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_[Vailima] Feb. 1892._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--This has been a busyish month for a sick man. First,
Faauma--the bronze candlestick, whom otherwise I called my
butler--bolted from the bed and bosom of Lafaele, the Archangel
Hercules, prefect of the cattle. There was a deuce to pay, and Hercules
was inconsolable, and immediately started out after a new wife, and has
had one up on a visit, but says she has "no conversation"; and I think
he will take back the erring and possibly repentant candlestick; whom we
all devoutly prefer, as she is not only highly decorative, but
good-natured, and if she does little wo