My poor old cabman; his one horse made me three-quarters of an hour too late for dinner, but I had not the heart to discharge him and take another. Poor soul, he was so pleased with his pourboire, I have made Madame Zassetsky promise to employ him often; so he will be something the better for me, little as he will know it. I have read _Ordered South_; it is pretty decent I think, but poor, stiff, limping stuff at best--not half so well straightened up as _Roads_. However the stuff is good. God help us all, this is a rough world: address Hotel St. Romain, rue St. Roch, Paris. I draw the line: a chapter finished.--Ever your faithful friend, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. The line. _______________________________ That bit of childishness has made me laugh, do you blame me? FOOTNOTES: [7] See Scott himself, in the preface to the Author's edition. [8] _i.e._ on his book, _The Reign of Law_. [9] Compare the paragraph in _Ordered South_ describing the state of mind of the invalid doubtful of recovery, and ending: "He will pray for Medea; when she comes, let her either rejuvenate or slay." [10] Alluding to Heine's _Ritter von dem heiligen Geist_. [11] _Poste Restante_ [12] Thomas M^cCrie, D.D., author of the _Life of John Knox_, _Life of Andrew Melville_, etc. III STUDENT DAYS--_Concluded_ HOME AGAIN--LITERATURE AND LAW MAY 1874--JUNE 1875 Returning to Edinburgh by way of Paris in May 1874, Stevenson went to live with his parents at Swanston and Edinburgh and resumed his reading for the Bar. Illness and absence had done their work, and the old harmony of the home was henceforth quite re-established. In his spare time during the next year he worked hard at his chosen art, trying his hand at essays, short stories, criticisms, and prose poems. In all this experimental writing he had neither the aims nor the facility of the journalist, but strove always after the higher qualities of literature, and was never satisfied with what he had done. To find for all he had to say words of vital aptness and animation--to communicate as much as possible of what he has somewhere called "the incommunicable thrill of things"--was from the first his endeavour in literature, nay more, it was the main passion of his life: and the instrument that should serve his purpose could not be forged in haste. Neither was it easy for this past master of the random, the unexpected, the brilliantly back-foremost and topsy-turvy in talk, to learn in writing the habit of orderly arrangement and organic sequence which even the lightest forms of literature cannot lack.