rning for Edinburgh,
James More has escaped from the castle; it is far more real to me than
the Behring Sea or the Baring brothers either--he got the news of James
More's escape from the Lord Advocate, and started off straight to
comfort Catriona. You don't know her; she's James More's daughter, and a
respectable young wumman; the Miss Grants think so--the Lord Advocate's
daughters--so there can't be anything really wrong. Pretty soon we all
go to Holland, and be hanged; thence to Dunkirk, and be damned; and the
tale concludes in Paris, and be Poll-parrotted. This is the last
authentic news. You are not a real hard-working novelist; not a
practical novelist; so you don't know the temptation to let your
characters maunder. Dumas did it, and lived. But it is not war; it ain't
sportsmanlike, and I have to be stopping their chatter all the time.
Brown's appendix is great reading.

My only grief is that I can't
Use the idolatrous occupant.

Yours ever,

R. L. S.

Blessing and praising you for a useful (though idolatrous) occupant of
Kensington.

TO MISS ADELAIDE BOODLE

Samoa and the Samoans for children, continued after an eight months'
pause.

_Vailima Plantation, Samoan Islands, August 14th, 1892._

MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,--The lean man is exceedingly ashamed of himself,
and offers his apologies to the little girls in the cellar just above.
If they will be so good as to knock three times upon the floor, he will
hear it on the other side of his floor, and will understand that he is
forgiven. I believe I got you and the children--or rather left you and
the children--still on the road to the lean man's house. When you get up
there a great part of the forest has been cleared away. It comes back
again pretty quick, though not quite so high; but everywhere, except
where the weeders have been kept busy, young trees have sprouted up, and
the cattle and the horses cannot be seen as they feed. In this clearing
there are two or three houses scattered about, and between the two
biggest I think the little girls in the cellar would first notice a sort
of thing like a gridiron on legs made of logs and wood. Sometimes it
has a flag flying on it made of rags of old clothes. It is a fort (so I
am told) built by the person here who would be much the most interesting
to the girls in the cellar. This is a young gentleman of eleven years of
age answering to the name of Austin. It was after reading a book abo