of camp stools) he
walked out last Sunday to behold the paper-chase. I cannot tell you how
taken I am with this exploit of the President's and the housekeeper's.
It is like Don Quixote, but infinitely superior. If I could only do it
without offence, what a subject it would make!

To-morrow morning early I am off up the coast myself. Therefore you must
allow me to break off here without further ceremony.--Yours ever,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO DR. BAKEWELL

The following is to a physician in Australia.

_Vailima, August 7, 1894._

DEAR DR. BAKEWELL,--I am not more than human. I am more human than is
wholly convenient, and your anecdote was welcome. What you say about
_unwilling work_, my dear sir, is a consideration always present with
me, and yet not easy to give its due weight to. You grow gradually into
a certain income; without spending a penny more, with the same sense of
restriction as before when you painfully scraped two hundred a year
together, you find you have spent, and you cannot well stop spending, a
far larger sum; and this expense can only be supported by a certain
production. However, I am off work this month, and occupy myself instead
in weeding my cacao, paper-chases, and the like. I may tell you, my
average of work in favourable circumstances is far greater than you
suppose: from six o'clock till eleven at latest,[81] and often till
twelve, and again in the afternoon from two to four. My hand is quite
destroyed, as you may perceive, to-day to a really unusual extent. I can
sometimes write a decent fist still; but I have just returned with my
arms all stung from three hours' work in the cacao.--Yours, etc.,

R. L. S.

TO JAMES PAYN

_Vailima, Upolu, Samoa [August 11, 1894]._

MY DEAR JAMES PAYN,--I hear from Lang that you are unwell, and it
reminds me of two circumstances: First, that it is a very long time
since you had the exquisite pleasure of hearing from me; and second,
that I have been very often unwell myself and sometimes had to thank you
for a grateful anodyne.

They are not good, the circumstances, to write an anodyne letter. The
hills and my house at less than (boom) a minute's interval quake with
thunder; and though I cannot hear that part of it, shells are falling
thick into the fort of Luatuanu'u (boom). It is my friends of the
_Curacoa_, the _Falke_, and the _Bussard_ bombarding (after all
these--boom--months) the rebels of Atua. (B