to Miss Adelaide Boodle

Saranac Lake, Adirondacks, N.Y., U.S.A., Christmas 1887.

MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—And a very good Christmas to you all; and better fortune; and if worse, the more courage to support it—which I think is the kinder wish in all human affairs.  Somewhile—I fear a good while—after this, you should receive our Christmas gift; we have no tact and no taste, only a welcome and (often) tonic brutality; and I dare say the present, even after my friend Baxter has acted on and reviewed my hints, may prove a White Elephant.  That is why I dread presents.  And therefore pray understand if any element of that hamper prove unwelcome, it is to be exchanged.  I will not sit down under the name of a giver of White Elephants.  I never had any elephant but one, and his initials were R. L. S.; and he trod on my foot at a very early age.  But this is a fable, and not in the least to the point: which is that if, for once in my life, I have wished to make things nicer for anybody but the Elephant (see fable), do not suffer me to have made them ineffably more embarrassing, and exchange—ruthlessly exchange!

For my part, I am the most cockered up of any mortal being; and one of the healthiest, or thereabout, at some modest distance from the bull’s eye.  I am condemned to write twelve articles in Scribner’s Magazine for the love of gain; I think I had better send you them; what is far more to the purpose, I am on the jump with a new story which has bewitched me—I doubt it may bewitch no one else.  It is called The Master of Ballantrae—pronounce Bällän-tray.  If it is not good, well, mine will be the fault; for I believe it is a good tale.

The greetings of the season to you, and your mother, and your sisters.  My wife heartily joins.—And I am, yours very sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

P.S.—You will think me an illiterate dog: I am, for the first time, reading Robertson’s Sermons.  I do not know how to express how much I think of them.  If by any chance you should be as illiterate as I, and not know them, it is worth while curing the defect.

R. L. S.