rm! I was down
yesterday afternoon at Papauta, and heard much growling of war, and the
delightful news that the C. J. and the President are going to run away
from Mulinuu and take refuge in the Tivoli hotel.

_23rd. Mail day._--_The Ebb Tide_, all but (I take it) fifteen pages, is
now in your hands--possibly only about eleven pp. It is hard to say. But
there it is, and you can do your best with it. Personally, I believe I
would in this case make even a sacrifice to get Gordon Browne and
copious illustration. I guess in ten days I shall have finished with it;
then I go next to _D. Balfour_, and get the proofs ready: a nasty job
for me, as you know. And then? Well, perhaps I'll take a go at the
family history. I think that will be wise, as I am so much off work. And
then, I suppose, _Weir of Hermiston_, but it may be anything. I am
discontented with _The Ebb Tide_, naturally; there seems such a veil of
words over it; and I like more and more naked writing; and yet sometimes
one has a longing for full colour and there comes the veil again. _The
Young Chevalier_ is in very full colour, and I fear it for that
reason.--Ever,

R. L. S.

TO S. R. CROCKETT

Glencorse Church in the Pentlands, mentioned by Stevenson with so
much emotion in the course of this letter, served him for the scene
of Chapter VI. in _Weir of Hermiston_, where his old associations and
feelings in connection with the place have so admirably inspired him.

_Vailima, Samoa, May 17th, 1893._

DEAR MR. CROCKETT,--I do not owe you two letters, nor yet nearly one,
sir! The last time I heard of you, you wrote about an accident, and I
sent you a letter to my lawyer, Charles Baxter, which does not seem to
have been presented, as I see nothing of it in his accounts. Query, was
that lost? I should not like you to think I had been so unmannerly and
so inhuman. If you have written since, your letter also has miscarried,
as is much the rule in this part of the world, unless you register.

Your book is not yet to hand, but will probably follow next month. I
detected you early in the Bookman, which I usually see, and noted you in
particular as displaying a monstrous ingratitude about the footnote.
Well, mankind is ungrateful; "Man's ingratitude to man makes countless
thousands mourn," quo' Rab--or words to that effect. By the way, an
anecdote of a cautious sailor: "Bill, Bill," says I to him, "_or words
to that effect_."

I shall nev