ellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count a
jealous race), I never knew one but gave you the name of honesty and
kindness: come to think of it gravely, this is better than the finest
hearing. We are all on the march to deafness, blindness, and all
conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get there with a
report so good. My good news is a health astonishingly reinstated. This
climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking
from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms of
squalls and surf; new interests of gentle natives,--the whole tale of my
life is better to me than any poem.

I am fresh just now from the leper settlement of Molokai, playing
croquet with seven leper girls, sitting and yarning with old, blind,
leper beachcombers in the hospital, sickened with the spectacle of
abhorrent suffering and deformation amongst the patients, touched to the
heart by the sight of lovely and effective virtues in their helpers: no
stranger time have I ever had, nor any so moving. I do not think it a
little thing to be deaf, God knows, and God defend me from the
same!--but to be a leper, or one of the self-condemned, how much more
awful! and yet there's a way there also. "There are Molokais
everywhere," said Mr. Dutton, Father Damien's dresser; you are but new
landed in yours; and my dear and kind adviser, I wish you, with all my
soul, that patience and courage which you will require. Think of me
meanwhile on a trading schooner bound for the Gilbert Islands,
thereafter for the Marshalls, with a diet of fish and cocoanut before
me; bound on a cruise of--well, of investigation to what islands we can
reach, and to get (some day or other) to Sydney, where a letter
addressed to the care of R. Towns & Co. will find me sooner or later;
and if it contain any good news, whether of your welfare or the courage
with which you bear the contrary, will do me good.--Yours affectionately
(although so near a stranger),

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO LADY TAYLOR

_Honolulu, June 19th, 1889._

MY DEAR LADY TAYLOR,--Our new home, the _Equator_, trading schooner,
rides at the buoy to-night, and we are for sea shortly. All your folk of
the Roost held us for phantoms and things of the night from our first
appearance; but I do wish you would try to believe in our continued
existence, as flesh and blood obscurely tossed in the Pacific, or
walking coral shores, and in our affection, which i