to E. L. Burlingame

Vailima, Upolu, August 1st, ’92.

MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Herewith My Grandfather.  I have had rather a bad time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very garrulous stage; as for getting him in order, I could do but little towards that; however, there are one or two points of interest which may justify us in printing.  The swinging of his stick and not knowing the sailor of Coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he wrote the lives in the Bell Book particularly please me. I hope my own little introduction is not egoistic; or rather I do not care if it is.  It was that old gentleman’s blood that brought me to Samoa.

By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams’s History have never come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.

Please send me Stonehenge on Horse, Stories and Interludes by Barry Pain, and Edinburgh Sketches and Memoirs by David Masson.  The Wrecker has turned up.  So far as I have seen, it is very satisfactory, but on pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage.  The two Latin quotations instead of following each other being separated (doubtless for printing considerations) by a line of prose.  My compliments to the printers; there is doubtless such a thing as good printing, but there is such a thing as good sense.

The sequel to Kidnapped, David Balfour by name, is about three-quarters done and gone to press for serial publication.  By what I can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for volume form early next spring.—Yours very sincerely,

R. L. S.