Lastly, let me apologise for the crucifixion that I am inflicting on you (_bien à contre-cœur_) by my bad writing. I was once the best of writers; landladies, puzzled as to my ‘trade,’ used to have their honest bosoms set at rest by a sight of a page of manuscript.—‘Ah,’ they would say, ‘no wonder they pay you for that’;—and when I sent it in to the printers, it was given to the boys! I was about thirty-nine, I think, when I had a turn of scrivener’s palsy; my hand got worse; and for the first time, I received clean proofs. But it has gone beyond that now, I know I am like my old friend James Payn, a terror to correspondents; and you would not believe the care with which this has been written.—Believe me to be, very sincerely yours, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO MRS. A. BAKER _December_ 1893. DEAR MADAM,—There is no trouble, and I wish I could help instead. As it is, I fear I am only going to put you to trouble and vexation. This Braille writing is a kind of consecration, and I would like if I could to have your copy perfect. The two volumes are to be published as Vols. I. and II. of _The Adventures of David Balfour_. 1st, _Kidnapped_; 2nd, _Catriona_. I am just sending home a corrected _Kidnapped_ for this purpose to Messrs. Cassell, and in order that I may if possible be in time, I send it to you first of all. Please, as soon as you have noted the changes, forward the same to Cassell and Co., La Belle Sauvage Yard, Ludgate Hill. I am writing to them by this mail to send you _Catriona_. You say, dear madam, you are good enough to say, it is ‘a keen pleasure’ to you to bring my book within the reach of the blind. Conceive then what it is to me! and believe me, sincerely yours, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. I was a barren tree before, I blew a quenchèd coal, I could not, on their midnight shore, The lonely blind console. A moment, lend your hand, I bring My sheaf for you to bind, And you can teach my words to sing In the darkness of the blind. R. L. S. TO HENRY JAMES _Apia_, _December_ 1893. MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,—The mail has come upon me like an armed man three days earlier than was expected; and the Lord help me! It is impossible I should answer anybody the way they should be. Your jubilation over _Catriona_ did me good, and still more the subtlety and truth of your remark on the starving of the visual sense in that book. ’Tis true, and unless I make the greater effort—and am, as a step to that, convinced of its necessity—it will be more true I fear in the future. I _hear_ people talking, and I _feel_ them acting, and that seems to me to be fiction. My two aims may be described as—