to A. Conan Doyle

Vailima, Apia, Samoa, April 5th, 1893.

DEAR SIR,—You have taken many occasions to make yourself very agreeable to me, for which I might in decency have thanked you earlier.  It is now my turn; and I hope you will allow me to offer you my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  That is the class of literature that I like when I have the toothache.  As a matter of fact, it was a pleurisy I was enjoying when I took the volume up; and it will interest you as a medical man to know that the cure was for the moment effectual.  Only the one thing troubles me: can this be my old friend Joe Bell?—I am, yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—And lo, here is your address supplied me here in Samoa!  But do not take mine, O frolic fellow Spookist, from the same source; mine is wrong.

R. L. S.