than the _Minister_; it's less of a tale--and there is a
beauty, a material beauty, of the tale _ipse_, which clever critics
nowadays long and love to forget; it has more real flaws; but somehow it
is--well, I read it last anyway, and it's by Barrie. And he's the man
for my money. The glove is a great page; it is startlingly original, and
as true as death and judgment. Tibbie Birse in the Burial is great, but
I think it was a journalist that got in the word "official." The same
character plainly had a word to say to Thomas Haggard. Thomas affects me
as a lie--I beg your pardon; doubtless he was somebody you knew; that
leads people so far astray. The actual is not the true.

I am proud to think you are a Scotchman--though to be sure I know
nothing of that country, being only an English tourist, quo' Gavin
Ogilvy. I commend the hard case of Mr. Gavin Ogilvy to J. M. Barrie,
whose work is to me a source of living pleasure and heartfelt national
pride. There are two of us now that the Shirra might have patted on the
head. And please do not think when I thus seem to bracket myself with
you, that I am wholly blinded with vanity. Jess is beyond my frontier
line; I could not touch her skirt; I have no such glamour of twilight on
my pen. I am a capable artist; but it begins to look to me as if you
were a man of genius. Take care of yourself for my sake. It's a devilish
hard thing for a man who writes so many novels as I do, that I should
get so few to read. And I can read yours, and I love them.

A pity for you that my amanuensis is not on stock to-day, and my own
hand perceptibly worse than usual.--Yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_December 5th, 1892._

_P.S._--They tell me your health is not strong. Man, come out here and
try the Prophet's chamber. There's only one bad point to us--we do rise
early. The Amanuensis states that you are a lover of silence--and that
ours is a noisy house--and she is a chatterbox--I am not answerable for
these statements, though I do think there is a touch of garrulity about
my premises. We have so little to talk about, you see. The house is
three miles from town, in the midst of great silent forests. There is a
burn close by, and when we are not talking you can hear the burn, and
the birds, and the sea breaking on the coast three miles away and six
hundred feet below us, and about three times a month a bell--I don't
know where the bell is, nor who rings it; it may be the bell in Ha