The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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Mrs. Strong acted as his secretary and the majority of his writing now
was done by dictation. "He generally makes notes early in the morning,"
she wrote, "which he elaborates as he reads them aloud ... he never
falters for a word, but gives me the sentence with capital letters and
all the stops as clearly and steadily as though he were reading from an
unseen book."

The two South Sea books occupied much of his time, but it was of his own
land and people so far away that he had so little hope of ever seeing
again, he loved best to write.

"It is a singular thing," he wrote to James Barrie, "that I should live
here in the South Seas, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit
the cold old huddle of grey hills from which we came."

He finished and sent away further adventures of David Balfour and Alan
Breck under the title of "David Balfour." "St. Ives" followed with its