The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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am still flesh and blood--I should enjoy it. Simpson did the other day,
and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine--man alive I want
gossip."

Day in and day out he worked doggedly, fighting discouragement, with
little strength or inspiration to write anything very worth while.

To cap all, his landlady's little boy fell ill, and Stevenson, who had a
great love and sympathy for all children, helped to nurse him, and this
proved too much in the nervous and exhausted state he was in. The boy
recovered, but Stevenson fell ill again, and for six weeks hovered
between life and death.

This seems to have been the turning-point in his ill luck. Toward the
middle of February, as he slowly began to mend, he was cheered on by
long letters from home, full of anxiety for his health and advances of
money from his father, with strict instructions that from now on he was