tive for yourself. Not that the wind is
unhealthy; only when it comes strong, it is both very high and very
cold, which makes it the d-v-l. But as I am writing to a lady, I had
better avoid this topic; winds requiring a great scope of language.

Please remember me to all at home; give Ramsay a pennyworth of
acidulated drops for his good taste.--And believe me, your affectionate
cousin,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO MISS FERRIER

_La Solitude, Hyeres [November 22, 1883]._

DEAR MISS FERRIER,--Many thanks for the photograph. It is---well, it is
like most photographs. The sun is an artist of too much renown; and, at
any rate, we who knew Walter "in the brave days of old" will be
difficult to please.

I was inexpressibly touched to get a letter from some lawyers as to some
money. I have never had any account with my friends; some have gained
and some lost; and I should feel there was something dishonest in a
partial liquidation even if I could recollect the facts, _which I
cannot_. But the fact of his having put aside this memorandum touched me
greatly.

The mystery of his life is great. Our chemist in this place, who had
been at Malvern, recognised the picture. You may remember Walter had a
romantic affection for all pharmacies? and the bottles in the window
were for him a poem? He said once that he knew no pleasure like driving
through a lamplit city, waiting for the chemists to go by.

All these things return now.

He had a pretty full translation of Schiller's _AEsthetic Letters_, which
we read together, as well as the second part of _Faust_, in Gladstone
Terrace, he helping me with the German. There is no keepsake I should
more value than the MS. of that translation. They were the best days I
ever had with him, little dreaming all would so soon be over. It needs a
blow like this to convict a man of mortality and its burthen. I always
thought I should go by myself; not to survive. But now I feel as if the
earth were undermined, and all my friends have lost one thickness of
reality since that one passed. Those are happy who can take it
otherwise; with that I found things all beginning to dislimn. Here we
have no abiding city, and one felt as though he had--and O too much
acted.

But if you tell me, he did not feel my silence. However, he must have
done so; and my guilt is irreparable now. I thank God at least heartily
that he did not resent it.

Please remember me to Sir Alexander and Lady