r relieved you did not vote
for regular papers, as I feared the traces. It is my design from time to
time to write a paper of a reminiscential (beastly word) description;
some of them I could scarce publish from different considerations; but
some of them--for instance, my long experience of gambling
places--Homburg, Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte
Carlo--would make good magazine padding, if I got the stuff handled the
right way. I never could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has
something to do with the making-up, has it not? I am scribbling a lot
just now; if you are taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas. I
could send you some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly
ripe. If you have kept back the volume of ballads, I'll soon make it of
a respectable size if this fit continue. By the next mail you may expect
some more _Wrecker_, or I shall be displeased. Probably no more than a
chapter, however, for it is a hard one, and I am denuded of my proofs,
my collaborator having walked away with them to England; hence some
trouble in catching the just note.

I am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce interest you on
Broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui and black boys, and planting and
weeding, and axes and cutlasses; my hands are covered with blisters and
full of thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing, so are beer and
skittles, but give me farmering in the tropics for real interest. Life
goes in enchantment; I come home to find I am late for dinner; and when
I go to bed at night, I could cry for the weariness of my loins and
thighs. Do not speak to me of vexation, the life brims with it, but with
living interest fairly.

Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New Guinea missionary, a
man I love. The rest of my life is a prospect of much rain, much weeding
and making of paths, a little letters, and devilish little to eat.--I
am, my dear Burlingame, with messages to all whom it may concern, very
sincerely yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_[Vailima] Monday, twenty-somethingth of December 1890._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I do not say my Jack is anything extraordinary; he is
only an island horse; and the profane might call him a Punch; and his
face is like a donkey's; and natives have ridden him, and he has no
mouth in consequence, and occasionally shies. But his merits are equally
surprising; and I don't think I should ever have kno