I expect other letters now steadily. If I have to wait another two months, I shall begin to be happy. Will you remember me most affectionately to your wife? Shake hands with Anthony from me; and God bless your mother. God bless Stephen! Does he not know that I am a man, and cannot live by bread alone, but must have guineas into the bargain. _Burns_, I believe, in my own mind, is one of my high-water marks; Meiklejohn flames me a letter about it, which is so complimentary that I must keep it or get it published in the Monterey Californian. Some of these days I shall send an exemplaire of that paper; it is huge.--Ever your affectionate friend, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO SIDNEY COLVIN _Monterey, 21st October [1879]._ MY DEAR COLVIN,--Although you have absolutely disregarded my plaintive appeals for correspondence, and written only once as against God knows how many notes and notikins of mine--here goes again. I am now all alone in Monterey, a real inhabitant, with a box of my own at the P. O. I have splendid rooms at the doctor's, where I get coffee in the morning (the doctor is French), and I mess with another jolly old Frenchman, the stranded fifty-eight-year-old wreck of a good-hearted, dissipated, and once wealthy Nantais tradesman. My health goes on better; as for work, the draft of my book was laid aside at p. 68 or so; and I have now, by way of change, more than seventy pages of a novel, a one-volume novel, alas! to be called either _A Chapter in the Experience of Arizona_ _Breckonridge_ or _A Vendetta in the West_, or a combination of the two. The scene from Chapter IV. to the end lies in Monterey and the adjacent country; of course, with my usual luck, the plot of the story is somewhat scandalous, containing an illegitimate father for piece of resistance.... Ever yours, R. L. S. TO P.G. HAMERTON The following refers to Mr. Hamerton's candidature, which was not successful, for the Professorship of Fine Art at Edinburgh:-- _Monterey [November 1879]._ MY DEAR MR. HAMERTON,--Your letter to my father was forwarded to me by mistake, and by mistake I opened it. The letter to myself has not yet reached me. This must explain my own and my father's silence. I shall write by this or next post to the only friends I have who, I think, would have an influence, as they are both professors. I regret exceedingly that I am not in Edinburgh, as I could perhaps have done more, and I need not tell you that what I might do for you in the matter of the election is neither from friendship nor gratitude, but because you are the only man (I beg your pardon) worth a damn. I shall write to a third friend, now I think of it, whose father will have great influence.