"_Burns_" means the article on Burns which R. L. S. had been
commissioned to write for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The "awfully
nice man" was the Hon. J. Seed, formerly Secretary to the Customs and
Marine Department of New Zealand; and it was from his conversation
that the notion of the Samoan Islands as a place of refuge for the
sick and world-worn first entered Stevenson's mind, to lie dormant (I
never heard him speak of it) and be revived thirteen years later.
[_Edinburgh, June 1875._]
Simply a scratch. All right, jolly, well, and through with the
difficulty. My father pleased about the _Burns_. Never travel in the
same carriage with three able-bodied seamen and a fruiterer from Kent;
the A.-B.'s speak all night as though they were hailing vessels at sea;
and the fruiterer as if he were crying fruit in a noisy
market-place--such, at least, is my _funeste_ experience. I wonder if a
fruiterer from some place else--say Worcestershire--would offer the same
phenomena? insoluble doubt.