I feel a little old and fagged, and chary of speech, and not very sure of spirit in my work; but considering what a year I have passed, and how I have twice sat on Charon's pierhead, I am surprising. My father has presented us with a very pretty home in this place, into which we hope to move by May. My _Child's Verses_ come out next week. _Otto_ begins to appear in April; _More New Arabian Nights_ as soon as possible. Moreover, I am neck deep in Wellington; also a story on the stocks, _The Great North Road_. O, I am busy! Lloyd is at college in Edinburgh. That is, I think, all that can be said by way of news. Have you read _Huckleberry Finn_? It contains many excellent things; above all, the whole story of a healthy boy's dealings with his conscience, incredibly well done. My own conscience is badly seared; a want of piety; yet I pray for it, tacitly, every day; believing it, after courage, the only gift worth having; and its want, in a man of any claims to honour, quite unpardonable. The tone of your letter seemed to me very sound. In these dark days of public dishonour, I do not know that one can do better than carry our private trials piously. What a picture is this of a nation! No man that I can see, on any side or party, seems to have the least sense of our ineffable shame: the desertion of the garrisons. I tell my little parable that Germany took England, and then there was an Indian Mutiny, and Bismarck said: "Quite right: let Delhi and Calcutta and Bombay fall; and let the women and children be treated Sepoy fashion," and people say, "O, but that is very different!" And then I wish I were dead. Millais (I hear) was painting Gladstone when the news came of Gordon's death; Millais was much affected, and Gladstone said, "Why? _It is the man's own temerity!_" Voila le Bourgeois! le voila nu! But why should I blame Gladstone, when I too am a Bourgeois? when I have held my peace? Why did I hold my peace? Because I am a sceptic: _i.e._ a Bourgeois. We believe in nothing, Symonds; you don't, and I don't; and these are two reasons, out of a handful of millions, why England stands before the world dripping with blood and daubed with dishonour. I will first try to take the beam out of my own eye, trusting that even private effort somehow betters and braces the general atmosphere. See, for example, if England has shown (I put it hypothetically) one spark of manly sensibility, they have been shamed into it by the spectacle of Gordon. Police-Officer Cole is the only man that I see to admire. I dedicate my _New Arabs_ to him and Cox, in default of other great public characters.--Yours ever most affectionately, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO EDMUND GOSSE The following refers to an edition of Gray, with notes and a short prefatory Life by Mr. Gosse; and to the publication of the _Child's Garden of Verses_. _Bonallie Towers, Bournemouth, March 12, 1885._