to Miss Adelaide Boodle

Bournemouth, August 19th, 1887.

MY DEAR MISS BOODLE,—I promise you the paper-knife shall go to sea with me; and if it were in my disposal, I should promise it should return with me too.  All that you say, I thank you for very much; I thank you for all the pleasantness that you have brought about our house; and I hope the day may come when I shall see you again in poor old Skerryvore, now left to the natives of Canada, or to worse barbarians, if such exist.  I am afraid my attempt to jest is rather à contre-cœur.  Good-bye—au revoir—and do not forget your friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.