Union House, Manasquan, N. J., but address to Scribner's.
May 11, 1888.
My dear Charles,—I have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big.... If this business fails to set me up, well, £2,000 is gone, and I know I can't get better. We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht Casco.—With a million thanks for all your dear friendliness, ever yours affectionately,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
[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 he 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 of desert islands.—Your father's friend,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
THE VEERY-THRUSH
By J. Russell Taylor
Blow softly, thrush, upon the hush