[75] As to admire The Black Arrow.
[76] The suppressed first part of the Amateur Emigrant, written in San Francisco in 1879, which it was proposed now to condense and to some extent recast for the Edinburgh Edition.
[77] Word omitted in MS.
[78] I may be allowed to quote the following sentence from a letter of this gentleman written when the news of our friend’s death reached England:—“So great was his power of winning love that though I knew him for less than a week I could have borne the loss of many a more intimate friend with less sorrow than Stevenson’s. When I saw him, last Easter, there was no suggestion of failure of strength. After all I had heard of his delicacy I was astonished at his vigour. He was up at five, and at work soon after, and at eleven o’clock at night he was dancing on the floor of the big room while I played Scotch and Irish reels on the rickety piano. He would talk to me for hours of home and old friends, but with a wonderful cheerfulness, knowing himself banished from them for life and yet brought close to them by love. I confidently counted on his living; he took keen interest in my own poor work, and it was one of my ambitions to send him a book some day which would better deserve his attention.”
[79] Sentimental Tommy: whose chief likeness to R. L. S. was meant to be in the literary temperament and passion for the mot propre.
[80] A proposed frontispiece for one of the volumes of the Edinburgh Edition.
[81] Sic: query “least”?
[82] Of The Wrecker.
[83] Trieb, impulse.
[84] It seemed an obvious duty to publish the speech in question through the English press, as the best proof both of Stevenson’s wise and understanding methods of dealing with his native friends, and of the affection and authority which he enjoyed among them. I have reprinted it, as a necessary supplement to this letter, in Appendix II. at end of the present volume.