sterling (0 pounds 0s. 5d.).

"Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street observed the same
slender gentleman armed, like George Washington, with his little
hatchet, splitting kindling, and breaking coal for his fire. He does
this quasi-publicly upon the window-sill; but this is not to be
attributed to any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his
prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in calling an axe), and
daily surprised at the perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is
this: That the sill is a strong supporting beam, and that blows of the
same emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the entire shanty
into hell. Thenceforth, for from three hours, he is engaged darkly
with an ink-bottle. Yet he is not blacking his boots, for the only
pair that he possesses are innocent of lustre, and wear the natural
hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The
youngest child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this
strange occupant enters or quits the house, 'Dere's de author.' Can
it be that this bright-haired innocent has found the true clue to the
mystery? The being in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to
that honourable craft."

Here are a few letters belonging to the winter of 1887-88, nearly all
written from Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks, celebrated by Emerson, and
now a most popular holiday resort in the United States, and were
originally published in _Scribner's Magazine_. . . "It should be said
that, after his long spell of weakness at Bournemouth, Stevenson had gone
West in search of health among the bleak hill summits--'on the Canadian
border of New York State, very unsettled and primitive and cold.' He had
made the voyage in an ocean tramp, the _Ludgate Hill_, the sort of craft
which any person not a born child of the sea would shun in horror.
Stevenson, however, had 'the finest time conceivable on board the
"strange floating menagerie."'" Thus he describes it in a letter to Mr
Henry James:

"Stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the vast
continent of these incongruities rolled the while like a haystack; and
the stallions stood hypnotised by the motion, looking through the port
at our dinner-table, and winked when the crockery was broken; and the
little monkeys stared at each other in their cages, and were thrown
overboard like little bluish babie