to E. L. Burlingame

[Vailima, December 1890.]

MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—By some diabolical accident, I have mislaid your last.  What was in it?  I know not, and here I am caught unexpectedly by the American mail, a week earlier than by computation.  The computation, not the mail, is supposed to be in error.  The vols. of Scribner’s have arrived, and present a noble appearance in my house, which is not a noble structure at present.  But by autumn we hope to be sprawling in our verandah, twelve feet, sir, by eighty-eight in front, and seventy-two on the flank; view of the sea and mountains, sunrise, moonrise, and the German fleet at anchor three miles away in Apia harbour.  I hope some day to offer you a bowl of kava there, or a slice of a pineapple, or some lemonade from my own hedge.  ‘I know a hedge where the lemons grow’—Shakespeare.  My house at this moment smells of them strong; and the rain, which a while ago roared there, now rings in minute drops upon the iron roof.  I have no Wrecker for you this mail, other things having engaged me.  I was on the whole rather relieved you did not vote for regular papers, as I feared the traces.  It is my design from time to time to write a paper of a reminiscential (beastly word) description; some of them I could scarce publish from different considerations; but some of them—for instance, my long experience of gambling places—Homburg, Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte Carlo—would make good magazine padding, if I got the stuff handled the right way.  I never could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has something to do with the making-up, has it not?  I am scribbling a lot just now; if you are taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas.  I could send you some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly ripe.  If kept back the volume of ballads, I’ll soon make it a respectable size if this fit continue.  By the next mail you may expect some more Wrecker, or I shall be displeased.  Probably no more than a chapter, however, for it is a hard one, and I am denuded of my proofs, my collaborator having walked away with them to England; hence some trouble in catching the just note.

I am a mere farmer: my talk, which would scarce interest you on Broadway, is all of fuafua and tuitui, and black boys, and planting and weeding, and axes and cutlasses; my hands are covered with blisters and full of thorns; letters are, doubtless, a fine thing, so are beer and skittles, but give me farmering in the tropics for real interest.  Life goes in enchantment; I come home to find I am late for dinner; and when I go to bed at night, I could cry for the weariness of my loins and thighs.  Do not speak to me of vexation, the life brims with it, but with living interest fairly.

Christmas I go to Auckland, to meet Tamate, the New Guinea missionary, a man I love.  The rest of my life is a prospect of much rain, much weeding and making of paths, a little letters, and devilish little to eat.—I am, my dear Burlingame, with messages to all whom it may concern, very sincerely yours,

Robert Louis Stevenson.