hieroglyphs of
George Meredith. His name may be known to you. It is Sidney Lysaght. He
is staying with us but a day or two, and it is strange to me and not
unpleasant to hear all the names, old and new, come up again. But oddly
the new are so much more in number. If I revisited the glimpses of the
moon on your side of the ocean, I should know comparatively few of
them.

My amanuensis deserts me--I should have said you, for yours is the loss,
my script having lost all bond with humanity. One touch of nature makes
the whole world kin: that nobody can read my hand. It is a humiliating
circumstance that thus evens us with printers!

You must sometimes think it strange--or perhaps it is only I that should
so think it--to be following the old round, in the gas lamps and the
crowded theatres, when I am away here in the tropical forest and the
vast silences!

My dear Archer, my wife joins me in the best wishes to yourself and Mrs.
Archer, not forgetting Tom; and I am yours very cordially,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

Partly concerning a fresh rising, this time of the partisans of
Tamasese from the district of Atua, which had occurred and was after
some time suppressed; partly in reference to the visit of Mr. Sidney
Lysaght; partly in reply to a petition that his letters might be less
entirely taken up with native affairs, of relatively little meaning
to his correspondent.

[_Vailima, April 1894._]

MY DEAR COLVIN,--This is the very day the mail goes, and I have as yet
written you nothing. But it was just as well--as it was all about my
"blacks and chocolates," and what of it had relation to whites you will
read some of in the Times. It means, as you will see, that I have at one
blow quarrelled with _all_ the officials of Samoa, the Foreign Office,
and I suppose her Majesty the Queen with milk and honey blest. But
you'll see in the Times. I am very well indeed, but just about dead and
mighty glad the mail is near here, and I can just give up all hope of
contending with my letters, and lie down for the rest of the day. These
Times letters are not easy to write. And I dare say the consuls say,
"Why, then, does he write them?"

I had miserable luck with _St. Ives_; being already half-way through it,
a book I had ordered six months ago arrives at last, and I have to
change the first half of it from top to bottom! How could I have dreamed
the French prisoners were watched