as a _personnel_, but God knows what they may believe when they
come to do so; it can't be stranger or more improbable than what
Christianity had come to be by the same time.

Your letter was easily read, the pagination presented no difficulty, and
I read it with much edification and gusto. To look back, and to
stereotype one bygone humour--what a hopeless thing! The mind runs ever
in a thousand eddies like a river between cliffs. You (the ego) are
always spinning round in it, east, west, north, and south. You are
twenty years old, and forty, and five, and the next moment you are
freezing at an imaginary eighty; you are never the plain forty-four that
you should be by dates. (The most philosophical language is the Gaelic,
which has _no present tense_--and the most useless.) How, then, to
choose some former age, and stick there?

R. L. S.

TO SIR HERBERT MAXWELL

_Vailima, Samoa, September 10, 1894._

DEAR SIR HERBERT MAXWELL,--I am emboldened by reading your very
interesting Rhind Lectures to put to you a question: What is my name,
Stevenson?

I find it in the forms Stevinetoun, Stevensoune, Stevensonne, Stenesone,
Stewinsoune, M'Stein, and MacStephane. My family, and (as far as I can
gather) the majority of the inglorious clan, hailed from the borders of
Cunningham and Renfrew, and the upper waters of the Clyde. In the Barony
of Bothwell was the seat of the laird Stevenson of Stevenson; but, as of
course you know, there is a parish in Cunningham and places in Peebles
and Haddington bearing the same name.

If you can at all help me, you will render me a real service which I
wish I could think of some manner to repay.--Believe me, yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

_P.S._--I should have added that I have perfect evidence before me that
(for some obscure reason) Stevenson was a favourite alias with the
M'Gregors.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_Vailima, Samoa, October 6th, 1894._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--We have had quite an interesting month and mostly in
consideration of that road which I think I told you was about to be
made. It was made without a hitch, though I confess I was considerably
surprised. When they got through, I wrote a speech to them, sent it down
to a Missionary to be translated, and invited the lot to a feast. I
thought a good deal of this feast. The occasion was really interesting.
I wanted to pitch it in hot. And I wished to have as many influential
witnesses pre