DEAR S. C.,--Books received with great thanks. Very nice books, though I see you underrate my cecity: I could no more read their beautiful Bible than I could sail in heaven. However I have sent for another and can read the rest for patience. I quite understand your feelings about the _Deacon_, which is a far way behind; but I get miserable when I think of Henley cutting this splash and standing, I fear, to lose a great deal of money. It is about Henley, not Brodie, that I care. I fear my affections are not strong to my past works; they are blotted out by others; and anyhow the _Deacon_ is damn bad. I am half asleep and can no more discourse. Say to your friends, "Look here, some friends of mine are bringing out a play; it has some stuff; suppose you go and see it." But I know I am a cold, unbelieving fellow, incapable of those hot claps that honour you and Henley and therefore--I am asleep. _Child's Garden_ (first instalment) come. Fanny ill; self asleep. R. L. S. TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON _Hotel Chabassiere, Royat [July 1884]._ MY DEAR PEOPLE,--The weather has been demoniac; I have had a skiff of cold, and was finally obliged to take to bed entirely; to-day, however, it has cleared, the sun shines, and I begin to * * * * * _Several days after._--I have been out once, but now am back in bed. I am better, and keep better, but the weather is a mere injustice. The imitation of Edinburgh is, at times, deceptive; there is a note among the chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the shrillest spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side, but in front, just under the Miss Graemes' big chimney stack. It had a fine alto character--a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in my joints--say in the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room; a knickering, flighty, fleering, and yet spectral cackle. I mind it above all on winter afternoons, late, when the window was blue and spotted with rare rain-drops, and, looking out, the cold evening was seen blue all over, with the lamps of Queen's and Frederick's Street dotting it with yellow, and flaring eastward in the squalls. Heavens, how unhappy I have been in such circumstances--I, who have now positively forgotten the colour of unhappiness; who am full like a fed ox, and dull like a fresh turf, and have no more spiritual life, for good or evil, than a French bagman. We are at Chabassiere's, for of course it was nonsense to go up the hill when we could not walk. The child's poems in a far extended form are likely soon to be heard of--which Cummy I dare say will be glad to know. They will make a book of about one hundred pages.--Ever your affectionate, R. L. S. TO SIDNEY COLVIN