to C. W. Stoddard

East Oakland, Cal., May 1880.

MY DEAR STODDARD,—I am guilty in thy sight and the sight of God.  However, I swore a great oath that you should see some of my manuscript at last; and though I have long delayed to keep it, yet it was to be.  You re-read your story and were disgusted; that is the cold fit following the hot.  I don’t say you did wrong to be disgusted, yet I am sure you did wrong to be disgusted altogether.  There was, you may depend upon it, some reason for your previous vanity, as well as your present mortification.  I shall hear you, years from now, timidly begin to retrim your feathers for a little self-laudation, and trot out this misdespised novelette as not the worst of your performances.  I read the album extracts with sincere interest; but I regret that you spared to give the paper more development; and I conceive that you might do a great deal worse than expand each of its paragraphs into an essay or sketch, the excuse being in each case your personal intercourse; the bulk, when that would not be sufficient, to be made up from their own works and stories.  Three at least—Menken, Yelverton, and Keeler—could not fail of a vivid human interest.  Let me press upon you this plan; should any document be wanted from Europe, let me offer my services to procure it.  I am persuaded that there is stuff in the idea.

Are you coming over again to see me some day soon?  I keep returning, and now hand over fist, from the realms of Hades: I saw that gentleman between the eyes, and fear him less after each visit.  Only Charon, and his rough boatmanship, I somewhat fear.

I have a desire to write some verses for your album; so, if you will give me the entry among your gods, goddesses, and godlets, there will be nothing wanting but the Muse.  I think of the verses like Mark Twain; sometimes I wish fulsomely to belaud you; sometimes to insult your city and fellow-citizens; sometimes to sit down quietly, with the slender reed, and troll a few staves of Panic ecstasy—but fy! fy! as my ancestors observed, the last is too easy for a man of my feet and inches.

At least, Stoddard, you now see that, although so costive, when I once begin I am a copious letter-writer.  I thank you, and au revoir.

Robert Louis Stevenson.