t
does any single soul understand me?

Fanny is on the whole very much better. Lloyd has been under the
weather, and goes for a month to the South Island of New Zealand for
some skating, save the mark! I get all the skating I want among
officials.

Dear Colvin, please remember that my life passes among my "blacks or
chocolates." If I were to do as you propose, in a bit of a tiff, it
would cut you off entirely from my life. You must try to exercise a
trifle of imagination, and put yourself, perhaps with an effort, into
some sort of sympathy with these people, or how am I to write to you? I
think you are truly a little too Cockney with me.--Ever yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO W. B. YEATS

_Vailima, Samoa, April 14, 1894._

DEAR SIR,--Long since when I was a boy I remember the emotions with
which I repeated Swinburne's poems and ballads. Some ten years ago, a
similar spell was cast upon me by Meredith's _Love in the Valley_; the
stanzas beginning "When her mother tends her" haunted me and made me
drunk like wine; and I remember waking with them all the echoes of the
hills about Hyeres. It may interest you to hear that I have a third time
fallen in slavery: this is to your poem called the _Lake Isle of
Innisfree_. It is so quaint and airy, simple, artful, and eloquent to
the heart--but I seek words in vain. Enough that "always night and day I
hear lake water lapping with low sounds on the shore," and am, yours
gratefully,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO GEORGE MEREDITH

The young lady referred to in the following is Mr. Meredith's
daughter, now Mrs. H. Sturgis; the bearer of the introduction, Mr.
Sidney Lysaght, author of _The Marplot_ and _One of the Grenvilles._
It is only in the first few chapters of Mr. Meredith's _Amazing
Marriage_ that the character of Gower Woodseer has been allowed to
retain any likeness to that of R. L. S.

_Vailima, Samoa, April 17th, 1894._

MY DEAR MEREDITH,--Many good things have the gods sent to me of late.
First of all there was a letter from you by the kind hand of Mariette,
if she is not too great a lady to be remembered in such a style; and
then there came one Lysaght with a charming note of introduction in the
well-known hand itself. We had but a few days of him, and liked him
well. There was a sort of geniality and inward fire about him at which I
warmed my hands. It is long since I have seen a young man who has left