of their good will alone, that we still live
and still have claims to honour. The sins of the most innocent, if they
were exactly visited, would ruin them to the doer. And if you know any
man who believes himself to be worthy of a wife's love, a friend's
affection, a mistress's caress, even if venal, you may rest assured he
is worthy of nothing but a kicking. I fear men who have no open faults;
what do they conceal? We are not meant to be good in this world, but to
try to be, and fail, and keep on trying; and when we get a cake to say,
"Thank God!" and when we get a buffet, to say, "Just so: well hit!"

I have been getting some of the buffets of late; but have amply earned
them--you need not pity me. Pity sick children and the individual poor
man; not the mass. Don't pity anybody else, and never pity fools. The
optimistic Stevenson; but there is a sense in these wanderings.

Now I have heard your letter, and my sermon was not mal-a-propos. For
you seem to be complaining. Everybody's home is depressing, I believe;
it is their difficult business to make it less so. There is an
unpleasant saying, which would have pricked me sharply at your
age.--Yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO COSMO MONKHOUSE

_La Solitude, Hyeres [April 24, 1884]._

DEAR MONKHOUSE,--If you are in love with repose, here is your occasion:
change with me. I am too blind to read, hence no reading; I am too weak
to walk, hence no walking; I am not allowed to speak, hence no talking;
but the great simplification has yet to be named; for, if this goes on,
I shall soon have nothing to eat--and hence, O Hallelujah! hence no
eating. The offer is a fair one: I have not sold myself to the devil,
for I could never find him. I am married, but so are you. I sometimes
write verses, but so do you. Come! _Hic quies!_ As for the commandments,
I have broken them so small that they are the dust of my chambers; you
walk upon them, triturate and toothless; and with the Golosh of
Philosophy, they shall not bite your heel. True, the tenement is
falling. Ay, friend, but yours also. Take a larger view; what is a year
or two? dust in the balance! 'Tis done, behold you Cosmo Stevenson, and
me R. L. Monkhouse; you at Hyeres, I in London; you rejoicing in the
clammiest repose, me proceeding to tear your tabernacle into rags, as I
have already so admirably torn my own.

My place to which I now introduce you--it is yours--is like a London
house, high