The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

Back Forward Menu

"May 27, 1888.

"DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS--Your father has brought you this day to see me
and tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going to
do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after,
to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin
by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the
introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded
ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and
admirable point in your character. You were also,--I use the past tense
with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I
am writing,--a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly
self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must
pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may perhaps like to know that
the lean, flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a
state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant; harassed with work which
he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which