to Edmund Gosse

Bonallie Towers, Branksome Park, Bournemouth, Nov. 15, 1884.

MY DEAR GOSSE,—This Mr. Morley [339] of yours is a most desperate fellow.  He has sent me (for my opinion) the most truculent advertisement I ever saw, in which the white hairs of Gladstone are dragged round Troy behind my chariot wheels.  What can I say?  I say nothing to him; and to you, I content myself with remarking that he seems a desperate fellow.

All luck to you on your American adventure; may you find health, wealth, and entertainment!  If you see, as you likely will, Frank R. Stockton, pray greet him from me in words to this effect:—

My Stockton if I failed to like,
   It were a sheer depravity,
For I went down with the Thomas Hyke
   And up with the Negative Gravity!

I adore these tales.

I hear flourishing accounts of your success at Cambridge, so you leave with a good omen.  Remember me to green corn if it is in season; if not, you had better hang yourself on a sour apple tree, for your voyage has been lost.—Yours affectionately,

Robert Louis Stevenson.