Your statement about your initials, it will be seen, I pass over in contempt and silence. When once I have made up my mind, let me tell you, sir, there lives no pock-pudding who can change it. Your anger I defy. Your unmanly reference to a well-known statesman I puff from me, sir, like so much vapour. Weg is your name; Weg. W E G. My enthusiasm has kind of dropped from me. I envy you your wife, your home, your child--I was going to say your cat. There would be cats in my home too if I could but get it. I may seem to you "the impersonation of life," but my life is the impersonation of waiting, and that's a poor creature. God help us all, and the deil be kind to the hindmost! Upon my word, we are a brave, cheery crew, we human beings, and my admiration increases daily--primarily for myself, but by a roundabout process for the whole crowd; for I dare say they have all their poor little secrets and anxieties. And here am I, for instance, writing to you as if you were in the seventh heaven, and yet I know you are in a sad anxiety yourself. I hope earnestly it will soon be over, and a fine pink Gosse sprawling in a tub, and a mother in the best of health and spirits, glad and tired, and with another interest in life. Man, you are out of the trouble when this is through. A first child is a rival, but a second is only a rival to the first; and the husband stands his ground and may keep married all his life--a consummation heartily to be desired. Good-bye, Gosse. Write me a witty letter with good news of the mistress. R. L. S. FOOTNOTES: [20] The letter breaks off here. [21] Thomas Basin or Bazin, the historian of Charles VIII. and Louis XI. [22] R. Glasgow Brown lay dying in the Riviera. V THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT S.S. DEVONIA--MONTEREY AND SAN FRANCISCO--MARRIAGE July 1879-July 1880 In France, as has been already indicated, Stevenson had met the American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, who was afterwards to become his wife. Her domestic relations had not been fortunate; to his chivalrous nature her circumstances appealed no less than her person; and almost from their first meeting, which befell at Grez, immediately after the canoe voyage of 1876, he conceived for her an attachment which was to transform and determine his life. On her return to America with her children in the autumn of 1878, she determined to seek a divorce from her husband. Hearing of her intention, together with very disquieting news of her health, and hoping that after she had obtained the divorce he might make her his wife, Stevenson suddenly started for California at the beginning of August 1879.