The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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pass Christmas, is it?" But some days later, nothing daunted, he added:
"I lead a pretty happy life, though you might not think it. I have great
fun trying to be economical, which I find as good a game of play as any
other. I have no want of occupation and though I rarely see any one to
speak to, have little time to worry."

To make matters worse, letters containing money went astray and word
came that some articles submitted to his publishers in England, on which
he had depended for funds, were not satisfactory, and this forced him to
reduce his living expenses to forty-five cents a day. The letters from
home were most unsatisfactory and lacked the kind of news he longed for.
"Not one soul ever gives me any _news_," he complained to Sidney Colvin,
"about people or things, everybody writes me sermons; it is good for me,
but hardly the food necessary for a man who lives all alone on
forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work
and many heavy thoughts. If one of you could write me a letter with a
jest in it, a letter like what is written to real people in the world--I