I am not well at all. But hope to be better. You know I have been hawked to death these last months. And then I lived too low, I fear; and any way I have got pretty low and out at elbows in health. I wish I could say better,--but I cannot. With a constitution like mine, you never know--to-morrow I may be carrying topgallant sails again: but just at present I am scraping along with a jurymast and a kind of amateur rudder. Truly I have some misery, as things go; but these things are mere detail. However, I do not want to _crever_, _claquer_, and cave in just when I have a chance of some happiness; nor do I mean to. All the same, I am more and more in a difficulty how to move every day. What a day or an hour might bring forth, God forbid that I should prophesy. Certainly, do what you like about the stories; _Will o' the Mill_, or not. It will be Caldecott's book or nobody's. I am glad you liked the _Guitar_: I always did: and I think C. could make lovely pikters to it: it almost seems as if I must have written it for him express. I have already been a visitor at the Club for a fortnight; but that's over, and I don't much care to renew the period. I want to be married, not to belong to all the Clubs in Christendie.... I half think of writing up the Sand-lot agitation for Morley; it is a curious business; were I stronger, I should try to sugar in with some of the leaders: a chield amang 'em takin' notes; one, who kept a brothel, I reckon, before she started socialist, particularly interests me. If I am right as to her early industry, you know she would be sure to adore me. I have been all my days a dead hand at a harridan, I never saw the one yet that could resist me. When I die of consumption, you can put that upon my tomb. * * * * * Sketch of my tomb follows:-- ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON born 1850, of a family of engineers, died ... "Nitor aquis." Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill. You, who pass this grave, put aside hatred; love kindness; be all services remembered in your heart and all offences pardoned; and as you go down again among the living, let this be your question: can I make some one happier this day before I lie down to sleep? Thus the dead man speaks to you from the dust: you will hear no more from him. Who knows, Colvin, but I may thus be of more use when I am buried than ever when I was alive? The more I think of it, the more earnestly do I desire this. I may perhaps try to write it better some day; but that is what I want in sense. The verses are from a beayootiful poem by me. R. L. S. TO SIDNEY COLVIN _608 Bush Street, San Francisco [March 1880]._ MY DEAR COLVIN,--My landlord and landlady's little four-year-old child is dying in the house; and O, what he has suffered! It has really affected my health. O never, never any family for me! I am cured of that.