Yes, it is like old times to be writing you from the Riviera, and after all that has come and gone who can predict anything? How fortune tumbles men about! Yet I have not found that they change their friends, thank God. Both of our loves to your sister and yourself. As for me, if I am here and happy, I know to whom I owe it; I know who made my way for me in life, if that were all, and I remain, with love, your faithful friend, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO EDMUND GOSSE _Chalet la Solitude_, _Hyères_, [_April_ 1883]. MY DEAR GOSSE,—I am very guilty; I should have written to you long ago; and now, though it must be done, I am so stupid that I can only boldly recapitulate. A phrase of three members is the outside of my syntax. First, I liked the _Rover_ better than any of your other verse. I believe you are right, and can make stories in verse. The last two stanzas and one or two in the beginning—but the two last above all—I thought excellent. I suggest a pursuit of the vein. If you want a good story to treat, get the _Memoirs of the Chevalier Johnstone_, and do his passage of the Tay; it would be excellent: the dinner in the field, the woman he has to follow, the dragoons, the timid boatmen, the brave lasses. It would go like a charm; look at it, and you will say you owe me one. Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took a great resolve, and have packed off to him my new work, _The Silverado Squatters_. I do not for a moment suppose he will take it; but pray say all the good words you can for it. I should be awfully glad to get it taken. But if it does not mean dibbs at once, I shall be ruined for life. Pray write soon and beg Gilder your prettiest for a poor gentleman in pecuniary sloughs. Fourth, next time I am supposed to be at death’s door, write to me like a Christian, and let not your correspondence attend on business.—Yours ever, R. L. S. _P.S._—I see I have led you to conceive the _Squatters_ are fiction. They are not, alas! TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON _Chalet Solitude_, _May_ 5, [1883]. MY DEAREST PEOPLE,—I have had a great piece of news. There has been offered for _Treasure Island_—how much do you suppose? I believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my next letter. For two cents I would do so. Shall I? Anyway, I’ll turn the page first. No—well—A hundred pounds, all alive, O! A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid. Is not this wonderful? Add that I have now finished, in draft, the fifteenth chapter of my novel, and have only five before me, and you will see what cause of gratitude I have.