moans are great singers. They composed songs about
everything and everybody, so that one could judge the standing a person
held by the songs that were sung about him.

Those sung at Vailima parties were usually written by one of the house
"boys" and "they were danced and acted with great spirit.... Sometimes
every member of the family would be represented ... but the central
figure, the heart of the song was always Tusitala."

It is a marvel with the many demands made upon him, his varied
interests, and frequent visits to neighboring islands, Stevenson still
found time to write stories, poems, prayers, notes of the South Sea
Islands, Samoan history, and many, many letters. "It is a life that
suits me but absorbs me like an ocean," he said. Through it all his
health continued fairly good. He was able to take long tramps and rides
that would have been physically impossible two years before.

Mrs. Strong acted as his secretary and the majority of his writing now
was done by dictation. "He generally makes notes early in the morning,"
she wrote, "which he elaborates as he reads them aloud ... he never
falters for a word, but gives me the sentence with capital letters and
all the stops as clearly and steadily as though he were reading from an
unseen book."

The two South Sea books occupied much of his time, but it was of his own
land and people so far away that he had so little hope of ever seeing
again, he loved best to write.

"It is a singular thing," he wrote to James Barrie, "that I should live
here in the South Seas, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit
the cold old huddle of grey hills from which we came."

He finished and sent away further adventures of David Balfour and Alan
Breck under the title of "David Balfour." "St. Ives" followed with its
scenes laid around Edinburgh Castle, Swanston Cottage, and the Pentland
Hills. In his last book, "Weir of Hermiston," the one he left
unfinished, broken off in the midst of a word, he roamed the streets of
Auld Reekie again with a hero very like what he had once been himself,
who was likewise an enthusiastic member of the "Spec."

Something which pleased him greatly at this time was the news from his
friend Charles Baxter in Edinburgh that a complete edition of his works
was to be published in the best possible form with a limited number of
copies, to be called the "Edinburgh Edition."

"I suppose it was your idea to give it that name," Stevenson wrote,
thank