to Charles Baxter

[Vailima, September 1894.]

MY DEAR CHARLES,—. . . Well, there is no more Edmund Baxter now; and I think I may say I know how you feel.  He was one of the best, the kindest, and the most genial men I ever knew.  I shall always remember his brisk, cordial ways and the essential goodness which he showed me whenever we met with gratitude.  And the always is such a little while now!  He is another of the landmarks gone; when it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue; and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour.  It is human at least, if not divine.  And these deaths make me think of it with an ever greater readiness.  Strange that you should be beginning a new life, when I, who am a little your junior, am thinking of the end of mine.  But I have had hard lines; I have been so long waiting for death, I have unwrapped my thoughts from about life so long, that I have not a filament left to hold by; I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius, that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption, and think it long of coming.  Literally, no man has more wholly outlived life than I.  And still it’s good fun.

R. L. S.