. On one hand
the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher; great trees stand
round us in our clearing; there is an endless voice of birds; I have
never lived in such a heaven; just now, I have fever, which mitigates
but not destroys my gusto in my circumstances.--You may envy

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

... O, I don't know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail to the
magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip. Did I ask
you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound volumes of the
mag.? _quorum pars_. I might add that were there a good book or
so--new--I don't believe there is--such would be welcome.

I desire--I positively begin to awake--to be remembered to Scribner,
Low, St. Gaudens, Russell Sullivan. Well, well, you fellows have the
feast of reason and the flow of soul; I have a better-looking place and
climate: you should hear the birds on the hill now! The day has just
wound up with a shower; it is still light without, though I write within
here at the cheek of a lamp; my wife and an invaluable German are
wrestling about bread on the back verandah; and how the birds and the
frogs are rattling, and piping, and hailing from the woods! Here and
there a throaty chuckle; here and there, cries like those of jolly
children who have lost their way; here and there, the ringing
sleigh-bell of the tree frog. Out and away down below me on the sea it
is still raining; it will be wet under foot on schooners, and the house
will leak; how well I know that! Here the showers only patter on the
iron roof, and sometimes roar; and within, the lamp burns steady on the
tafa-covered walls, with their dusky tartan patterns, and the
book-shelves with their thin array of books; and no squall can rout my
house or bring my heart into my mouth.--The well-pleased South Sea
Islander,

R. L. S.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_Vailima, Tuesday, November 25th,1890._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I wanted to go out bright and early to go on with my
survey. You never heard of that. The world has turned, and much water
run under bridges, since I stopped my diary. I have written six more
chapters of the book, all good I potently believe, and given up, as a
deception of the devil's, the _High Woods_. I have been once down to
Apia, to a huge native feast at Seumanutafa's, the chief of Apia. There
was a vast mass of food, crowds of people, the police charging among
them with whips, the whole in high good humour