Now for the pictures. I take another sheet and begin to jot notes for them when my imagination serves: I will run through the book, writing when I have an idea. There, I have jotted enough to give the artist a notion. Of course, I don't do more than contribute ideas, but I will be happy to help in any and every way. I may as well add another idea; when the artist finds nothing much to illustrate, a good drawing of any OBJECT mentioned in the text, were it only a loaf of bread or a candlestick, is a most delightful thing to a young child. I remember this keenly.
Of course, if the artist insists on a larger form, I must I suppose, bow my head. But my idea I am convinced is the best, and would make the book truly, not fashionably pretty.
I forgot to mention that I shall have a dedication; I am going to dedicate 'em to Cummy; it will please her, and lighten a little my burthen of ingratitude. A low affair is the Muse business.
I will add no more to this lest you should want to communicate with the artist; try another sheet. I wonder how many I'll keep wandering to.
O I forgot. As for the title, I think 'Nursery Verses' the best. Poetry is not the strong point of the text, and I shrink from any title that might seem to claim that quality; otherwise we might have 'Nursery Muses' or 'New Songs of Innocence' (but that were a blasphemy), or 'Rimes of Innocence': the last not bad, or — an idea — 'The Jews' Harp,' or — now I have it — 'The Penny Whistle.'
THE PENNY WHISTLE: NURSERY VERSES BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. ILLUSTRATED BY —
And here we have an excellent frontispiece, of a party playing on a P. W. to a little ring of dancing children.
THE PENNY WHISTLE is the name for me.
Fool! this is all wrong, here is the true name: -
PENNY WHISTLES FOR SMALL WHISTLERS
The second title is queried, it is perhaps better, as simply PENNY WHISTLES.
Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge
That I your instrument debase:
By worse performers still we judge,
And give that fife a second place!
Crossed penny whistles on the cover, or else a sheaf of 'em.
SUGGESTIONS
IV. The procession — the child running behind it. The procession tailing off through the gates of a cloudy city.
IX. FOREIGN LANDS. — This will, I think, want two plates — the child climbing, his first glimpse over the garden wall, with what he sees — the tree shooting higher and higher like the beanstalk, and the view widening. The river slipping in. The road arriving in Fairyland.
X. WINDY NIGHTS. — The child in bed listening — the horseman galloping.
XII. The child helplessly watching his ship — then he gets smaller, and the doll joyfully comes alive — the pair landing on the island — the ship's deck with the doll steering and the child firing the penny canon. Query two plates? The doll should never come properly alive.
XV. Building of the ship — storing her — Navigation — Tom's accident, the other child paying no attention.
XXXI. THE WIND. — I sent you my notion of already.
XXXVII. FOREIGN CHILDREN. — The foreign types dancing in a jing-a- ring, with the English child pushing in the middle. The foreign children looking at and showing each other marvels. The English child at the leeside of a roast of beef. The English child sitting thinking with his picture-books all round him, and the jing-a-ring of the foreign children in miniature dancing over the picture- books.
XXXIX. Dear artist, can you do me that?
XLII. The child being started off — the bed sailing, curtains and all, upon the sea — the child waking and finding himself at home; the corner of toilette might be worked in to look like the pier.
XLVII. The lighted part of the room, to be carefully distinguished from my child's dark hunting grounds. A shaded lamp.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
HOTEL DES ILES D'OR, HYERES, VAR, MARCH 2, [1883]
MY DEAR MOTHER, — It must be at least a fortnight since we have had a scratch of a pen from you; and if it had not been for Cummy's letter, I should have feared you were worse again: as it is, I hope we shall hear from you to-day or to-morrow at latest.
HEALTH.
Our news is good: Fanny never got so bad as we feared, and we hope now that this attack may pass off in threatenings. I am greatly better, have gained flesh, strength, spirits; eat well, walk a good deal, and do some work without fatigue. I am off the sick list.
LODGING.
We have found a house up the hill, close to the town, an excellent place though very, very little. If I can get the landlord to agree to let us take it by the month just now, and let our month's rent count for the year in case we take it on, you may expect to hear we are again installed, and to receive a letter dated thus: -
La Solitude,
Hyeres-les-Palmiers,
Var.
If the man won't agree to that, of course I must just give it up, as the house would be dear enough anyway at 2000 f. However, I hope we may get it, as it is healthy, cheerful, and close to shops, and society, and civilisation. The garden, which is above, is lovely, and will be cool in summer. There are two rooms below with a kitchen, and four rooms above, all told. — Ever your affectionate son,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO THOMAS STEVENSON
HOTEL DES ILES D'OR, BUT MY ADDRESS WILL BE CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LE-PALMIERS, VAR, FRANCE, MARCH 17, 1883
DEAR SIR, — Your undated favour from Eastbourne came to hand in course of post, and I now hasten to acknowledge its receipt. We must ask you in future, for the convenience of our business arrangements, to struggle with and tread below your feet this most unsatisfactory and uncommercial habit. Our Mr. Cassandra is better; our Mr. Wogg expresses himself dissatisfied with our new place of business; when left alone in the front shop, he bawled like a parrot; it is supposed the offices are haunted.
To turn to the matter of your letter, your remarks on GREAT EXPECTATIONS are very good. We have both re-read it this winter, and I, in a manner, twice. The object being a play; the play, in its rough outline, I now see: and it is extraordinary how much of Dickens had to be discarded as unhuman, impossible, and ineffective: all that really remains is the loan of a file (but from a grown-up young man who knows what he was doing, and to a convict who, although he does not know it is his father — the father knows it is his son), and the fact of the convict-father's return and disclosure of himself to the son whom he has made rich. Everything else has been thrown aside; and the position has had to be explained by a prologue which is pretty strong. I have great hopes of this piece, which is very amiable and, in places, very strong indeed: but it was curious how Dickens had to be rolled away; he had made his story turn on such improbabilities, such fantastic trifles, not on a good human basis, such as I recognised. You are right about the casts, they were a capital idea; a good description of them at first, and then afterwards, say second, for the lawyer to have illustrated points out of the history of the originals, dusting the particular bust — that was all the development the thing would bear. Dickens killed them. The only really well EXECUTED scenes are the riverside ones; the escape in particular is excellent; and I may add, the capture of the two convicts at the beginning. Miss Havisham is, probably, the worst thing in human fiction. But Wemmick I like; and I like Trabb's boy; and Mr. Wopsle as Hamlet is splendid.
The weather here is greatly improved, and I hope in three days to be in the chalet. That is, if I get some money to float me there.
I hope you are all right again, and will keep better. The month of March is past its mid career; it must soon begin to turn toward the lamb; here it has already begun to do so; and I hope milder weather will pick you up. Wogg has eaten a forpet of rice and milk, his beard is streaming, his eyes wild. I am besieged by demands of work from America.
The 50 pounds has just arrived; many thanks; I am now at ease. -
Ever your affectionate son, PRO Cassandra, Wogg and Co.,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL
CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [APRIL 1883]
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I am one of the lowest of the — but that's understood. I received the copy, excellently written, with I think only one slip from first to last. I have struck out two, and added five or six; so they now number forty-five; when they are fifty, they shall out on the world. I have not written a letter for a cruel time; I have been, and am, so busy, drafting a long story (for me, I mean), about a hundred CORNHILL pages, or say about as long as the Donkey book: PRINCE OTTO it is called, and is, at the present hour, a sore burthen but a hopeful. If I had him all drafted, I should whistle and sing. But no: then I'll have to rewrite him; and then there will be the publishers, alas! But some time or other, I shall whistle and sing, I make no doubt.
I am going to make a fortune, it has not yet begun, for I am not yet clear of debt; but as soon as I can, I begin upon the fortune. I shall begin it with a halfpenny, and it shall end with horses and yachts and all the fun of the fair. This is the first real grey hair in my character: rapacity has begun to show, the greed of the protuberant guttler. Well, doubtless, when the hour strikes, we must all guttle and protube. But it comes hard on one who was always so willow-slender and as careless as the daisies.
Truly I am in excellent spirits. I have crushed through a financial crisis; Fanny is much better; I am in excellent health, and work from four to five hours a day — from one to two above my average, that is; and we all dwell together and make fortunes in the loveliest house you ever saw, with a garden like a fairy story, and a view like a classical landscape.
Little? Well, it is not large. And when you come to see us, you will probably have to bed at the hotel, which is hard by. But it is Eden, madam, Eden and Beulah and the Delectable Mountains and Eldorado and the Hesperidean Isles and Bimini.
We both look forward, my dear friend, with the greatest eagerness to have you here. It seems it is not to be this season; but I appoint you with an appointment for next season. You cannot see us else: remember that. Till my health has grown solid like an oak- tree, till my fortune begins really to spread its boughs like the same monarch of the woods (and the acorn, ay de mi! is not yet planted), I expect to be a prisoner among the palms.
Yes, it is like old times to be writing you from the Riviera, and after all that has come and gone who can predict anything? How fortune tumbles men about! Yet I have not found that they change their friends, thank God.
Both of our loves to your sister and yourself. As for me, if I am here and happy, I know to whom I owe it; I know who made my way for me in life, if that were all, and I remain, with love, your faithful friend,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, [APRIL 1883]
MY DEAR GOSSE, — I am very guilty; I should have written to you long ago; and now, though it must be done, I am so stupid that I can only boldly recapitulate. A phrase of three members is the outside of my syntax.
First, I liked the ROVER better than any of your other verse. I believe you are right, and can make stories in verse. The last two stanzas and one or two in the beginning — but the two last above all — I thought excellent. I suggest a pursuit of the vein. If you want a good story to treat, get the MEMOIRS OF THE CHEVALIER JOHNSTONE, and do his passage of the Tay; it would be excellent: the dinner in the field, the woman he has to follow, the dragoons, the timid boatmen, the brave lasses. It would go like a charm; look at it, and you will say you owe me one.
Second, Gilder asking me for fiction, I suddenly took a great resolve, and have packed off to him my new work, THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS. I do not for a moment suppose he will take it; but pray say all the good words you can for it. I should be awfully glad to get it taken. But if it does not mean dibbs at once, I shall be ruined for life. Pray write soon and beg Gilder your prettiest for a poor gentleman in pecuniary sloughs.
Fourth, next time I am supposed to be at death's door, write to me like a Christian, and let not your correspondence attend on business. — Yours ever,
R. L. S.
P.S. — I see I have led you to conceive the SQUATTERS are fiction.
They are not, alas!
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
CHALET SOLITUDE, MAY 5, [1883]
MY DEAREST PEOPLE, — I have had a great piece of news. There has been offered for TREASURE ISLAND — how much do you suppose? I believe it would be an excellent jest to keep the answer till my next letter. For two cents I would do so. Shall I? Anyway, I'll turn the page first. No — well — A hundred pounds, all alive, O! A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid. Is not this wonderful? Add that I have now finished, in draft, the fifteenth chapter of my novel, and have only five before me, and you will see what cause of gratitude I have.
The weather, to look at the per contra sheet, continues vomitable; and Fanny is quite out of sorts. But, really, with such cause of gladness, I have not the heart to be dispirited by anything. My child's verse book is finished, dedication and all, and out of my hands — you may tell Cummy; SILVERADO is done, too, and cast upon the waters; and this novel so near completion, it does look as if I should support myself without trouble in the future. If I have only health, I can, I thank God. It is dreadful to be a great, big man, and not be able to buy bread.
O that this may last!
I have to-day paid my rent for the half year, till the middle of September, and got my lease: why they have been so long, I know not.
I wish you all sorts of good things.
When is our marriage day? — Your loving and ecstatic son,
TREESURE EILAAN,
It has been for me a Treasure Island verily.
Letter: TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, MAY 8, 1883
MY DEAR PEOPLE, — I was disgusted to hear my father was not so well. I have a most troubled existence of work and business. But the work goes well, which is the great affair. I meant to have written a most delightful letter; too tired, however, and must stop. Perhaps I'll find time to add to it ere post.
I have returned refreshed from eating, but have little time, as Lloyd will go soon with the letters on his way to his tutor, Louis Robert (!!!!), with whom he learns Latin in French, and French, I suppose, in Latin, which seems to me a capital education. He, Lloyd, is a great bicycler already, and has been long distances; he is most new-fangled over his instrument, and does not willingly converse on other subjects.
Our lovely garden is a prey to snails; I have gathered about a bushel, which, not having the heart to slay, I steal forth withal and deposit near my neighbour's garden wall. As a case of casuistry, this presents many points of interest. I loathe the snails, but from loathing to actual butchery, trucidation of multitudes, there is still a step that I hesitate to take. What, then, to do with them? My neighbour's vineyard, pardy! It is a rich, villa, pleasure-garden of course; if it were a peasant's patch, the snails, I suppose, would have to perish.
The weather these last three days has been much better, though it is still windy and unkind. I keep splendidly well, and am cruelly busy, with mighty little time even for a walk. And to write at all, under such pressure, must be held to lean to virtue's side.
My financial prospects are shining. O if the health will hold, I should easily support myself. — Your ever affectionate son,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, [MAY 20, 1883]
MY DEAR GOSSE, — I enclose the receipt and the corrections. As for your letter and Gilder's, I must take an hour or so to think; the matter much importing — to me. The 40 pounds was a heavenly thing.
I send the MS. by Henley, because he acts for me in all matters, and had the thing, like all my other books, in his detention. He is my unpaid agent — an admirable arrangement for me, and one that has rather more than doubled my income on the spot.
If I have been long silent, think how long you were so and blush, sir, blush.
I was rendered unwell by the arrival of your cheque, and, like Pepys, 'my hand still shakes to write of it.' To this grateful emotion, and not to D.T., please attribute the raggedness of my hand.
This year I should be able to live and keep my family on my own earnings, and that in spite of eight months and more of perfect idleness at the end of last and beginning of this. It is a sweet thought.
This spot, our garden and our view, are sub-celestial. I sing daily with my Bunyan, that great bard,
'I dwell already the next door to Heaven!'
If you could see my roses, and my aloes, and my fig-marigolds, and my olives, and my view over a plain, and my view of certain mountains as graceful as Apollo, as severe as Zeus, you would not think the phrase exaggerated.
It is blowing to-day a HOT mistral, which is the devil or a near connection of his.
This to catch the post. — Yours affectionately,
R. L. STEVENSON.
Letter: TO EDMUND GOSSE
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, VAR, FRANCE, MAY 21, 1883
MY DEAR GOSSE, — The night giveth advice, generally bad advice; but I have taken it. And I have written direct to Gilder to tell him to keep the book back and go on with it in November at his leisure. I do not know if this will come in time; if it doesn't, of course things will go on in the way proposed. The 40 pounds, or, as I prefer to put it, the 1000 francs, has been such a piercing sun-ray as my whole grey life is gilt withal. On the back of it I can endure. If these good days of LONGMAN and the CENTURY only last, it will be a very green world, this that we dwell in and that philosophers miscall. I have no taste for that philosophy; give me large sums paid on the receipt of the MS. and copyright reserved, and what do I care about the non-beent? Only I know it can't last. The devil always has an imp or two in every house, and my imps are getting lively. The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet, excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her wooden eye upon me. I fall prone; spare me, Mother Nemesis! But catch her!
I must now go to bed; for I have had a whoreson influenza cold, and have to lie down all day, and get up only to meals and the delights, June delights, of business correspondence.
You said nothing about my subject for a poem. Don't you like it? My own fishy eye has been fixed on it for prose, but I believe it could be thrown out finely in verse, and hence I resign and pass the hand. Twig the compliment? — Yours affectionately
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[HYERES, MAY 1883.]
.. THE influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring, and am headachy. So, as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher's Boy — I turned me to — what thinkest 'ou? — to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. THE BLACK ARROW: A TALE OF TUNSTALL FOREST is his name: tush! a poor thing!
Will TREASURE ISLAND proofs be coming soon, think you?
I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot John Silver in TREASURE ISLAND. Of course, he is not in any other quality or feature the least like you; but the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you.
Otto is, as you say, not a thing to extend my public on. It is queer and a little, little bit free; and some of the parties are immoral; and the whole thing is not a romance, nor yet a comedy; nor yet a romantic comedy; but a kind of preparation of some of the elements of all three in a glass jar. I think it is not without merit, but I am not always on the level of my argument, and some parts are false, and much of the rest is thin; it is more a triumph for myself than anything else; for I see, beyond it, better stuff. I have nine chapters ready, or almost ready, for press. My feeling would be to get it placed anywhere for as much as could be got for it, and rather in the shadow, till one saw the look of it in print. — Ever yours,
PRETTY SICK.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES-LES-PALMIERS, MAY 1883
MY DEAR LAD, — The books came some time since, but I have not had the pluck to answer: a shower of small troubles having fallen in, or troubles that may be very large.
I have had to incur a huge vague debt for cleaning sewers; our house was (of course) riddled with hidden cesspools, but that was infallible. I have the fever, and feel the duty to work very heavy on me at times; yet go it must. I have had to leave FONTAINEBLEAU, when three hours would finish it, and go full-tilt at tushery for a while. But it will come soon.
I think I can give you a good article on Hokusai; but that is for afterwards; FONTAINEBLEAU is first in hand
By the way, my view is to give the PENNY WHISTLES to Crane or Greenaway. But Crane, I think, is likeliest; he is a fellow who, at least, always does his best.
Shall I ever have money enough to write a play? O dire necessity!
A word in your ear: I don't like trying to support myself. I hate the strain and the anxiety; and when unexpected expenses are foisted on me, I feel the world is playing with false dice. — Now I must Tush, adieu,
AN ACHING, FEVERED, PENNY-JOURNALIST.
A lytle Jape of TUSHERIE
By A. Tusher
The pleasant river gushes
Among the meadows green;
At home the author tushes;
For him it flows unseen.
The Birds among the Bushes
May wanton on the spray;
But vain for him who tushes
The brightness of the day!
The frog among the rushes
Sits singing in the blue.
By'r la'kin! but these tushes
Are wearisome to do!
The task entirely crushes
The spirit of the bard:
God pity him who tushes -
His task is very hard.
The filthy gutter slushes,
The clouds are full of rain,
But doomed is he who tushes
To tush and tush again.
At morn with his hair-brUshes,
Still, 'tush' he says, and weeps;
At night again he tushes,
And tushes till he sleeps.
And when at length he pushes
Beyond the river dark -
'Las, to the man who tushes,
'Tush' shall be God's remark!
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
[CHALET LA SOLITUDE, HYERES, MAY 1883.]
DEAR HENLEY, — You may be surprised to hear that I am now a great writer of verses; that is, however, so. I have the mania now like my betters, and faith, if I live till I am forty, I shall have a book of rhymes like Pollock, Gosse, or whom you please. Really, I have begun to learn some of the rudiments of that trade, and have written three or four pretty enough pieces of octosyllabic nonsense, semi-serious, semi-smiling. A kind of prose Herrick, divested of the gift of verse, and you behold the Bard. But I like it.
R. L. S.
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
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; Bulk Delights Publishers (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.
But what a great space and a great air there is in these small shallows where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall, calm, or sunrise! An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music, health, and physical beauty; all but love — to any worthy practiser. I sleep upon my art for a pillow; I waken in my art; I am unready for death, because I hate to leave it. I love my wife, I do not know how much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while I can conceive my being widowed, I refuse the offering of life without my art. I AM not but in my art; it is me; I am the body of it merely.
And yet I produce nothing, am the author of BRASHIANA and other works: tiddy-iddity — as if the works one wrote were anything but 'prentice's experiments. Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable. After this break in my work, beginning to return to it, as from light sleep, I wax exclamatory, as you see.
Sursum Corda:
Heave ahead:
Here's luck.
Art and Blue Heaven,
April and God's Larks.
Green reeds and the sky-scattering river.
A stately music.
Enter God!
R. L. S.
Ay, but you know, until a man can write that 'Enter God,' he has made no art! None! Come, let us take counsel together and make some!
Letter: TO W. E. HENLEY
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES [SUMMER 1883]
DEAR LAD, — Glad you like FONTAINEBLEAU. I am going to be the means, under heaven, of aerating or liberating your pages. The idea that because a thing is a picture-book all the writing should be on the wrong tack is TRISTE but widespread. Thus Hokusai will be really a gossip on convention, or in great part. And the Skelt will be as like a Charles Lamb as I can get it. The writer should write, and not illustrate pictures: else it's bosh..
Your remarks about the ugly are my eye. Ugliness is only the prose of horror. It is when you are not able to write MACBETH that you write THERESE RAQUIN. Fashions are external: the essence of art only varies in so far as fashion widens the field of its application; art is a mill whose thirlage, in different ages, widens and contracts; but, in any case and under any fashion, the great man produces beauty, terror, and mirth, and the little man produces cleverness (personalities, psychology) instead of beauty, ugliness instead of terror, and jokes instead of mirth. As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be ever, world without end. Amen!
And even as you read, you say, 'Of course, QUELLE RENGAINE!'
R. L. S.
Letter: TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
LA SOLITUDE, HYERES [SUMMER 1883]
MY DEAR CUMMY, — Yes, I own I am a real bad correspondent, and am as bad as can be in most directions.
I have been adding some more poems to your book. I wish they would look sharp about it; but, you see, they are trying to find a good artist to make the illustrations, without which no child would give a kick for it. It will be quite a fine work, I hope. The dedication is a poem too, and has been quite a long while written, but I do not mean you to see it till you get the book; keep the jelly for the last, you know, as you would often recommend in former days, so now you can take your own medicine.
I am very sorry to hear you have been so poorly; I have been very well; it used to be quite the other way, used it not? Do you remember making the whistle at Mount Chessie? I do not think it WAS my knife; I believe it was yours; but rhyme is a very great monarch, and goes before honesty, in these affairs at least. Do you remember, at Warriston, one autumn Sunday, when the beech nuts were on the ground, seeing heaven open? I would like to make a rhyme of that, but cannot.
Is it not strange to think of all the changes: Bob, Cramond, Delhi, Minnie, and Henrietta, all married, and fathers and mothers, and your humble servant just the one point better off? And such a little while ago all children together! The time goes swift and wonderfully even; and if we are no worse than we are, we should be grateful to the power that guides us. For more than a generation I have now been to the fore in this rough world, and been most tenderly helped, and done cruelly wrong, and yet escaped; and here I am still, the worse for wear, but with some fight in me still, and not unthankful — no, surely not unthankful, or I were then the worst of human beings!
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