ACROSS THE PLAINS
WITH
OTHER MEMORIES AND ESSAYS

TO PAUL BOURGET

Traveller and student and curious as you are, you will neverhave heard the name of Vailima, most likely not even that ofUpolu, and Samoa itself may be strange to your ears. Tothese barbaric seats there came the other day a yellow book withyour name on the title, and filled in every page with theexquisite gifts of your art. Let me take and change yourown words: J’ai beau admirer les autres de toutes mesforces, c’est avec vous que je me complais àvivre.

R. L. S.

Vailima,
     Upolu,
        Samoa.

LETTER TO THE AUTHOR

My dear Stevenson,

You have trusted me with the choice and arrangement of thesepapers, written before you departed to the South Seas, and haveasked me to add a preface to the volume. But it is yourprose the public wish to read, not mine; and I am sure they willwillingly be spared the preface. Acknowledgements are duein your name to the publishers of the several magazines fromwhich the papers are collected, viz. Fraser’s,Longman’s, the Magazine of Art, andScribner’s. I will only add, lest any readershould find the tone of the concluding pieces less inspiritingthan your wont, that they were written under circumstances ofespecial gloom and sickness. “I agree with you thelights seem a little turned down,” so you write to me now;“the truth is I was far through, and came none too soon tothe South Seas, where I was to recover peace of body andmind. And however low the lights, the stuff is true . ..” Well, inasmuch as the South Seas sirens havebreathed new life into you, we are bound to be heartily gratefulto them, though as they keep you so far removed from us, it isdifficult not to bear them a grudge; and if they would reconcileus quite, they have but to do two things more—to teach younew tales that shall charm us like your old, and to spare you, atleast once in a while in summer, to climates within reach of uswho are task-bound for ten months in the year beside theThames.

Yours ever,

SIDNEY COLVIN.

February, 1892.

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