mation you can possibly
wish to have as to us and ours. Do not be bluffed off by the somewhat
stern and monumental first impression that he may make upon you. He is
one of the best fellows in the world, and the same sort of fool that we
are, only better-looking, with all the faults of Vailimans and some of
his own--I say nothing about virtues.

I have lately been returning to my wallowing in the mire. When I was a
child, and indeed until I was nearly a man, I consistently read
Covenanting books. Now that I am a grey-beard--or would be, if I could
raise the beard--I have returned, and for weeks back have read little
else but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc. Of course this is with an idea of
a novel, but in the course of it I made a very curious discovery. I have
been accustomed to hear refined and intelligent critics--those who know
so much better what we are than we do ourselves,--trace down my literary
descent from all sorts of people, including Addison, of whom I could
never read a word. Well, laigh i' your lug, sir--the clue was found. My
style is from the Covenanting writers. Take a particular case--the
fondness for rhymes. I don't know of any English prose-writer who rhymes
except by accident, and then a stone had better be tied around his neck
and himself cast into the sea. But my Covenanting buckies rhyme all the
time--a beautiful example of the unconscious rhyme above referred to.

Do you know, and have you really tasted, these delightful works? If not,
it should be remedied; there is enough of the Auld Licht in you to be
ravished.

I suppose you know that success has so far attended my banners--my
political banners I mean, and not my literary. In conjunction with the
Three Great Powers I have succeeded in getting rid of My President and
My Chief-Justice. They've gone home, the one to Germany, the other to
Souwegia. I hear little echoes of footfalls of their departing footsteps
through the medium of the newspapers....

Whereupon I make you my salute with the firm remark that it is time to
be done with trifling and give us a great book, and my ladies fall into
line with me to pay you a most respectful courtesy, and we all join in
the cry, "Come to Vailima!"

My dear sir, your soul's health is in it--you will never do the great
book, you will never cease to work in L., etc., till you come to
Vailima.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO R. LE GALLIENNE

_Vailima, Samoa, December 28th, 1893._

DE