_Vailima_, _Apia_, _Samoa_, _Nov._ 7, 1890. I WISH you to add to the words at the end of the prologue; they run, I think, thus, ‘And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd’; add, ‘not as he told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.’ This becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters in the way of a conversation between Dodd and Havers. These little snippets of information and _faits-divers_ have always a disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet, readers like them. In this book we have introduced so many characters, that this kind of epilogue will be looked for; and I rather hope, looking far ahead, that I can lighten it in dialogue. We are well past the middle now. How does it strike you? and can you guess my mystery? It will make a fattish volume! I say, have you ever read the _Highland Widow_? I never had till yesterday: I am half inclined, bar a trip or two, to think it Scott’s masterpiece; and it has the name of a failure! Strange things are readers. I expect proofs and revises in duplicate. We have now got into a small barrack at our place. We see the sea six hundred feet below filling the end of two vales of forest. On one hand the mountain runs above us some thousand feet higher; great trees stand round us in our clearing; there is an endless voice of birds; I have never lived in such a heaven; just now, I have fever, which mitigates but not destroys my gusto in my circumstances.—You may envy ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. . . . O, I don’t know if I mentioned that having seen your new tail to the magazine, I cried off interference, at least for this trip. Did I ask you to send me my books and papers, and all the bound volumes of the mag.? _quorum pars_. I might add that were there a good book or so—new—I don’t believe there is—such would be welcome.