I got Gleeson White; your best work and either the best or second best in the book is the Ballade in Hot Weather; that is really a masterpiece of melody and fancy. Damn your Villanelles--and everybody's. G. Macdonald comes out strong in his two pious rondels; _Fons Bandusiae_ seems as exquisite as ever. To my surprise, I liked two of the Pantoums, the blue-bottle, and the still better after-death one from _Love in Idleness_. Lang cuts a poor figure, except in the Cricket one; your patter ballade is a great _tour de force_, but spoiled by similar caesuras. On the whole 'tis a ridiculous volume, and I had more pleasure out of it than I expected. I forgot to praise Grant Allen's excellent ballade, which is the one that runs with yours,--and here, to the point, a note from you at Margate--among East Winds and Plain Women, damn them! Well, what can we do or say? We are only at Saranac for the winter; and if this _Deacon_ comes off, why you may join us there in glory; I would I had some news of it. Saranac is not _quite_ so dear, in some ways, as the rest of this land, where it costs you a pound to sneeze, and fifty to blow your nose; but even here it costs $2.50 to get a box from the station! Think of it! Lift it up tenderly! They had need to pay well! but how poor devils live; and how it can pay to take a theatre company over to such a land, is more than I can fancy. The devil of the States for you is the conveyances, they are so dear--but O, what is not! I have thrown off my cold in excellent style, though still very groggy about the knees, so that when I climb a paling, of which we have many, I feel as precarious and nutatory as a man of ninety. Under this I grind; but I believe the place will suit me. Must stop.--Ever affectionately, R. L. S. TO HENRY JAMES The "dear Alexander" mentioned below is Mr. J. W. Alexander, the well-known American artist, who had been a welcome visitor to Stevenson at Bournemouth, and had drawn his portrait there. The humorous romance proceeding from Mr. Osbourne's typewriter was the first draft of _The Wrong Box_; or, as it was originally called, _The Finsbury Tontine_, or _The Game of Bluff_. The article by Mr. Henry James referred to in the last paragraph is one on R. L. S. which had appeared in the Century Magazine for October, and was reprinted in _Partial Portraits_. [_Saranac Lake, October 1887_.] I know not the day; but the month it is the drear October by the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.