pass on ours. They should be able to
sympathise with our delight.

Now I have all my miserable Scribner articles to rake together in the
inside of a fortnight: so you must not expect me to be more copious. I
have you all in the kindest memory, and am, your affectionate friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Remember me to Aubrey de Vere.

TO HOMER ST. GAUDENS

The following is addressed from Manasquan to a boy, the son of the
writer's friend, the sculptor St. Gaudens; for the rest, it explains
itself.

_Manasquan, New Jersey, 27th May 1888._

DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS,--Your father has brought you this day to see me,
and he tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am
going to do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you,
years after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write.
I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever
in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a
single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an
excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also (I use
the past tense, with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than
to that when I am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views)
startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that
you must pardon me if I can say no more: what else I marked, what
restlessness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness, what
experimental designs upon the furniture, was but the common inheritance
of human youth. But you may perhaps like to know that the lean flushed
man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a state of mind
extremely mingled and unpleasant: harassed with work which he thought he
was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you will in time
succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter than a voyage to
the South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert islands.--Your
father's friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO HENRY JAMES

_Manasquan (ahem!), New Jersey, May 28th, 1888._

MY DEAR JAMES,--With what a torrent it has come at last! Up to now, what
I like best is the first number of a _London Life_. You have never done
anything better, and I don't know if perhaps you have ever done anything
so good as the girl's outburst: tip-top. I have been preaching your
later works in your native land. I had to present the Beltraffio volume