WEGG.

I suppose by this you will have seen the lad--and his feet will have
been in the Monument--and his eyes beheld the face of George.[7] Well!

There is much eloquence in a well!
I am, Sir,
Yours
The Epigrammatist

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
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FINIS--EXPLICIT

TO E. L. BURLINGAME

The opening sentences of the following refer of course to _The
Wrecker_, and particularly to a suggestion of mine concerning the
relation of the main narrative to the prologue:--

_Vailima, Apia, Samoa, Nov. 7, 1890._

I wish you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they run, I
think, thus, "And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd"; add, "not as he
told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion." This becomes the
more needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert to
Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters in the way of a
conversation between Dodd and Havers. These little snippets of
information and _faits-divers_ have always a disjointed, broken-backed
appearance; yet, readers like them. In this book we have introduced so
many characters, that this kind of epilogue will be looked for; and I
rather hope, looking far ahead, that I can lighten it in dialogue.

We are well past the middle now. How does it strike you? and can you
guess my mystery? It will make a fattish volume!

I say, have you ever read the _Highland Widow_? I never had till
yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it Scott's
masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure! Strange things are
readers.

I expect proofs and revises in duplicate.

We have now got into a small barrack at our place. We see the sea six
hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest