The strain of anxiety recorded in the two last letters had given a
shake to Stevenson's own health, and it was agreed that he should go
for a yachting tour with Sir Walter Simpson in the Inner Hebrides.
_[Edinburgh, June 1874], Thursday._
I have been made so miserable by Chopin's _Marche funebre_. Try two of
Schubert's songs, "_Ich unglueckselige Atlas_" and "_Du schoenes
Fischermaedchen_"--they are very jolly. I have read aloud my death-cycle
from Walt Whitman this evening. I was very much affected myself, never
so much before, and it fetched the auditory considerable. Reading these
things that I like aloud when I am painfully excited is the keenest
artistic pleasure I know. It does seem strange that these dependent
arts--singing, acting, and in its small way reading aloud seem the best
rewarded of all arts. I am sure it is more exciting for me to read than
it was for W. W. to write; and how much more must this be so with
singing.
_Friday._--I am going in the yacht on Wednesday. I am not right yet, and
I hope the yacht will set me up. I am too tired to-night to make more of
it. Good-bye.--Ever your faithful friend,