o see me, and have some talk with
me on that and other matters. To this letter I at once replied,
directing to 17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh, saying that, as I was soon to be
in that City, it might be possible for me to see him there. In reply to
this letter Mr Stevenson wrote:

"THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR,
_Sunday_, _August_ (? _th_), 1881.

"MY DEAR SIR,--I should long ago have written to thank you for your
kind and frank letter; but, in my state of health, papers are apt to
get mislaid, and your letter has been vainly hunted for until this
(Sunday) morning.

"I must first say a word as to not quoting your book by name. It was
the consciousness that we disagreed which led me, I daresay, wrongly,
to suppress _all_ references throughout the paper. But you may be
certain a proper reference will now be introduced.

"I regret I shall not be able to see you in Edinburgh: one visit to
Edinburgh has already cost me too dear in that invaluable particular,
health; but if it should be at all possible for you to pass by
Braemar, I believe you would find an attentive listener, and I can
offer you a bed, a drive, and necessary food.

"If, however, you should not be able to come thus far, I can promise
two things. First, I shall religiously revise what I have written,
and bring out more clearly the point of view from which I regarded
Thoreau. Second, I shall in the preface record your objection.

"The point of view (and I must ask you not to forget that any such
short paper is essentially only a _section through_ a man) was this: I
desired to look at the man through his books. Thus, for instance,
when I mentioned his return to the pencil-making, I did it only in
passing (perhaps I was wrong), because it seemed to me not an
illustration of his principles, but a brave departure from them.
Thousands of such there were I do not doubt; still they might be
hardly to my purpose; though, as you say so, I suppose some of them
would be.

"Our difference as to 'pity,' I suspect, was a logomachy of my making.
No pitiful acts, on his part, would surprise me: I know he would be
more pitiful in practice than most of the whiners; but the spirit of
that practice would still seem to me to be unjustly described by the
word pity.

"When I try to be measured, I find myself usually suspected of a
sneaking unkindness for my subject,