llege people: "I was altogether a student," he said
with glee. He seems full of cheerfulness and thick-set energy. I feel as
if I could put him in a novel with effect; and ten to one, if I know
more of him, the image will be only blurred.

_Tuesday, Dec. 2nd._--I should have told you yesterday that all my boys
were got up for their work in moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort
of blacking--I suppose wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them
return at night, axe on shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a
choragus with a loud voice singing out, "March--step! March--step!" in
imperfect recollection of some drill.

R. L. S.

TO E. L. BURLINGAME

The intention here announced was only carried out to the extent of
finishing one paper, _My First Book_, and beginning a few
others--_Genesis of the Master of Ballantrae, Rosa Quo Locorum_,
etc.; see Edinburgh edition, _Miscellanies_, vol. iv. The "long
experience of gambling places" is a phrase which must not be
misunderstood. Stevenson loved risk to life and limb, but hated
gambling for money, and had known the tables only as a looker-on
during holiday or invalid travels as a boy and young man. "Tamate" is
the native (Rarotongan) word for trader, used especially as a name
for the famous missionary pioneer, the Rev. James Chalmers, for whom
Stevenson had an unbounded respect.

[_Vailima, December 1890._]

MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--By some diabolical accident, I have mislaid your
last. What was in it? I know not, and here I am caught unexpectedly by
the American mail, a week earlier than by computation. The computation,
not the mail, is supposed to be in error. The vols. of Scribner's have
arrived, and present a noble appearance in my house, which is not a
noble structure at present. But by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our
verandah, twelve feet, sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two on
the flank; view of the sea and mountains, sunrise, moonrise, and the
German fleet at anchor three miles away in Apia harbour. I hope some day
to offer you a bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pine-apple, or some
lemonade from my own hedge. "I know a hedge where the lemons
grow"--_Shakespeare_. My house at this moment smells of them strong; and
the rain, which a while ago roared there, now rings in minute drops upon
the iron roof. I have no _Wrecker_ for you this mail, other things
having engaged me. I was on the whole rathe