le naked brown boys and girls as
happy as the day was long; and on the banks of the stream beside them,
real toys--toy ships, full rigged, and with their sails set, though they
were lying in the dust on their beam ends. And then I knew for sure they
were all children in a fairy-story, living alone together in that lonely
house with the only toys in all the island; and that I had myself
driven, in my four-wheeled gig, into a corner of the fairy-story, and
the question was, should I get out again? But it was all right; I guess
only one of the wheels of the gig had got into the fairy-story; and the
next jolt the whole thing vanished, and we drove on in our sea-side
forest as before, and I have the honour to be Tomarcher's valued
correspondent, TERIITERA, which he was previously known as

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[MRS. R. L. STEVENSON TO SIDNEY COLVIN

This letter from Mrs. Stevenson serves to fill out and explain
allusions in the three or four preceding. The beautiful brown
princess is Princess Moe, ex-queen of Raiatea, well known to readers
of Pierre Loti and Miss Gordon Cumming. The move away from Papeete,
where Stevenson had fallen seriously ill, had been made in hopes of
finding on the island a climate that would suit him better.

_Tautira, Tahiti, Dec. 4th [1888]._

DEAR, long neglected, though never forgotten Custodian, I write you from
fairyland, where we are living in a fairy story, the guests of a
beautiful brown princess. We came to stay a week, five weeks have
passed, and we are still indefinite as to our time of leaving. It was
chance brought us here, for no one in Papeete could tell us a word about
this part of the island except that it was very fine to look at, and
inhabited by wild people--"almost as wild as the people of Anaho!" That
touch about the people of Anaho inclined our hearts this way, so we
finally concluded to take a look at the other side of Tahiti. The place
of our landing was windy, uninhabited except by mosquitoes, and Louis
was ill. The first day Lloyd and the Captain made an exploration, but
came back disgusted. They had found a Chinaman, a long way off, who
seemed to have some horses, but no desire to hire them to strangers, and
they had found nothing else whatever. The next morning I took Valentine
and went on a prospecting tour of my own. I found the Chinaman,
persuaded him to let me have two horses and a wagon, and went back for
the rest of my fa