MY DEAR LOCKER,—You are simply an angel of light, and your two letters have gone to the post; I trust they will reach the hearts of the recipients; at least, that could not be more handsomely expressed. About the cheque, well now I am going to keep it; but I assure you Mrs. —— has never asked me for money, and I would not dare to offer any till she did. For all that I shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as your almoner. In this way I reward myself for the ambiguity of my epistolary style. I suppose, if you please, you may say your verses are thin (would you so describe an arrow, by the way? and one that struck the gold? It scarce strikes me as exhaustively descriptive), and, thin or not, they are (and I have found them) inimitably elegant. I thank you again very sincerely for the generous trouble you have taken in this matter which was so near my heart, and you may be very certain it will be the fault of my health and not my inclination, if I do not see you before very long; for all that has passed has made me in more than the official sense sincerely yours, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. (To be continued.) THE POINT OF VIEW [Sidenote: "A Hundred Thousand Copies."] What is the formula for writing a book which will sell a hundred thousand copies? Authors consider the question with more or less interest, publishers meditate upon it more closely still. What sort of works is it that this interesting experience befalls? Are they literary masterpieces? Let us see. There was "David Harum;" so much of that as is literature is chiefly horse stories—excellent horse stories, without "tendency" or moral purpose. The rest of it that is good is made up of character sketches in which David Harum is the character. It is the kind of book of which you say, after it has entertained you and kept you cheerful for two or three evenings, that it is not much of a book, but has mighty good things in it, and the following morning you find it necessary to buy two more copies to send away. Then there is the "Dooley" book, which has been doing its tens of thousands; that, too, is a book which has good things in it rather than a literary masterpiece; and though the good things were better when served hot in the newspapers, they do not lose all their flavor when dished up on a cold plate. There is a book from Kansas called "In His Steps," which is reported to have sold by the million, both in this country and in Great Britain, which appeals to readers who are interested in putting the precepts of the Gospels into practical effect. There is not much literature in that book either, and in reckoning its readers it is proper to consider that it has been issued in very cheap form.