or is that a
dream? I should have to mark passages I fear, and certainly note pages
on the fly. If you think it a dream, will Bain get me a second-hand
copy, or who would? The sooner, and cheaper, I can get it the better. If
there is anything in your weird library that bears on either the man or
the period, put it in a mortar and fire it here instanter; I shall
catch. I shall want, of course, an infinity of books: among which, any
lives there may be; a life of the Marquis Marmont (the Marechal),
_Marmont's Memoirs_, _Greville's Memoirs_, _Peel's Memoirs_, _Napier_,
that blind man's history of England you once lent me, Hamley's
_Waterloo_; can you get me any of these? Thiers, idle Thiers also. Can
you help a man getting into his boots for such a huge campaign? How are
you? A Good New Year to you. I mean to have a good one, but on whose
funds I cannot fancy: not mine leastways, as I am a mere derelict and
drift beam-on to bankruptcy.

For God's sake, remember the man who set out for to conquer Arthur
Wellesley, with a broken bellows and an empty pocket.--Yours ever,

R. L. STEVENSON.

TO THOMAS STEVENSON

Stevenson had been asked by his father to look over the proofs of a
paper which the latter was about to read, as President of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, "On the Principal Causes of Silting in
Estuaries," in connection with the Manchester Ship Canal Scheme.

_Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, 14th January 1885._

MY DEAR FATHER,--I am glad you like the changes. I own I was pleased
with my hand's darg; you may observe, I have corrected several errors
which (you may tell Mr. Dick) he had allowed to pass his eagle eye; I
wish there may be none in mine; at least, the order is better. The
second title, "Some New Engineering Questions involved in the M. S. C.
Scheme of last Session of P.," likes me the best. I think it a very good
paper; and I am vain enough to think I have materially helped to polish
the diamond. I ended by feeling quite proud of the paper, as if it had
been mine; the next time you have as good a one, I will overhaul it for
the wages of feeling as clever as I did when I had managed to understand
and helped to set it clear. I wonder if I anywhere misapprehended you? I
rather think not at the last; at the first shot I know I missed a point
or two. Some of what may appear to you to be wanton changes, a little
study will show to be necessary.

Yes, Carlyle was ashamed of hims