wished.

Do you know that Dew Smith has two photographs of him, neither very bad?
and one giving a lively, though not flattering air of him in
conversation? If you have not got them, would you like me to write to
Dew and ask him to give you proofs?

I was so pleased that he and my wife made friends; that is a great
pleasure. We found and have preserved one fragment (the head) of the
drawing he made and tore up when he was last here. He had promised to
come and stay with us this summer. May we not hope, at least, some time
soon to have one from you?--Believe me, my dear Mrs. Jenkin, with the
most real sympathy, your sincere friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Dear me, what happiness I owe to both of you!

TO C. HOWARD CARRINGTON

In answer to an inquiry from a correspondent not personally known to
him, who had by some means heard of the _Great North Road_ project.

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, June 9th [1885]._

DEAR SIR,--_The Great North Road_ is still unfinished; it is scarce I
should say beyond Highgate: but it will be finished some day, bar the
big accident. It will not however gratify your taste; the highwayman is
not grasped: what you would have liked (and I, believe me) would have
been _Jerry Abershaw_: but Jerry was not written at the fit moment; I
have outgrown the taste--and his romantic horse-shoes clatter faintlier
down the incline towards Lethe.--Truly yours,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO KATHARINE DE MATTOS

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Summer 1885._

MY DEAR CATHERINE,--'Tis the most complete blague and folly to write to
you; you never answer and, even when you do, your letters crackle under
the teeth like ashes; containing nothing as they do but unseasonable
japes and a great cloudy vagueness as of the realm of chaos. In this I
know well they are like mine; and it becomes me well to write such--but
not you--for reasons too obvious to mention. We have both been sick; but
to-day I am up, though with an aching back. But I hope all will be
better. Of your views, state, finances, etc. etc., I know nothing. We
were mighty near the end of all things financially, when a strange shape
of a hand giving appeared in Heaven or from Hell, and set us up again
for the moment; yet still we totter on a whoreson brink. I beg pardon. I
forgot I was writing to a lady; but the word shall stay: it is the only
word; I would say it to the Q----n of E----d.

How do you like letter