to Miss Adelaide Boodle

[Saranac Lake, April 1888.]
Address c/o Messrs. Scribner’s Sons,
743 Broadway, N.Y.

MY DEAR GAMEKEEPER,—Your p. c. (proving you a good student of Micawber) has just arrived, and it paves the way to something I am anxious to say.  I wrote a paper the other day—Pulvis et Umbra;—I wrote it with great feeling and conviction: to me it seemed bracing and healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me), that I am very glad to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets, and hear some excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire.  But I find that to some people this vision of mine is a nightmare, and extinguishes all ground of faith in God or pleasure in man.  Truth I think not so much of; for I do not know it.  And I could wish in my heart that I had not published this paper, if it troubles folk too much: all have not the same digestion, nor the same sight of things.  And it came over me with special pain that perhaps this article (which I was at the pains to send to her) might give dismalness to my Gamekeeper at Home.  Well, I cannot take back what I have said; but yet I may add this.  If my view be everything but the nonsense that it may be—to me it seems self-evident and blinding truth—surely of all things it makes this world holier.  There is nothing in it but the moral side—but the great battle and the breathing times with their refreshments.  I see no more and no less.  And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled with promise.

Pray excuse a desponding author for this apology.  My wife is away off to the uttermost parts of the States, all by herself.  I shall be off, I hope, in a week; but where?  Ah! that I know not.  I keep wonderful, and my wife a little better, and the lad flourishing.  We now perform duets on two D tin whistles; it is no joke to make the bass; I think I must really send you one, which I wish you would correct . . . I may be said to live for these instrumental labours now, but I have always some childishness on hand.—I am, dear Gamekeeper, your indulgent but intemperate Squire,

Robert Louis Stevenson.