Et vous, mon tres cher ami? Comment cela va-t-il? Comment vous portez-vous? Comment va le commerce? Comment aimez vous le pays? et l'enfant? et la femme? Et enfin toutes les questions possibles. Ecrivez-moi donc bien vite, cher Simoneau. Et quant a moi, je vous promets que vous entendrez bien vite parler de moi; je vous _recrirai_ sous peu, et je vous enverrai un de mes livres. Ceci n'est qu'un serrement de main, _from the bottom of my heart, dear and kind old man_.--Your friend, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO W. E. HENLEY The "new dictionary" means, of course, the first instalments of the great Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, edited by Dr. J. A. H. Murray. _La Solitude, Hyeres [June 1883]._ DEAR LAD,--I was delighted to hear the good news about ----. Bravo, he goes uphill fast. Let him beware of vanity, and he will go higher; let him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be) see the merits and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at last to the top-gallant. There is no other way. Admiration is the only road to excellence; and the critical spirit kills, but envy and injustice are putrefaction on its feet. Thus far the moralist. The eager author now begs to know whether you may have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken; also whether in that case the dedication should not be printed therewith; _B_ulk _D_elights _P_ublishers (original aphorism; to be said sixteen times in succession as a test of sobriety). Your wild and ravening commands were received; but cannot be obeyed. And anyway, I do assure you I am getting better every day; and if the weather would but turn, I should soon be observed to walk in hornpipes. Truly I am on the mend. I am still very careful. I have the new dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and--bulk. I shall be raked i' the mools before it's finished; that is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing. I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of _Brashiana_ and other works, am merely beginning to commence to prepare to make a first start at trying to understand my profession. O the height and depth of novelty and worth in any art! and O that I am privileged to swim and shoulder through such oceans! Could one get out of sight of land--all in the blue? Alas not, being anchored here in flesh, and the bonds of logic being still about us.