_Vailima_, _Upolu_, _August_ 1_st_, ’92.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME,—Herewith _My Grandfather_. I have had rather a bad
time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very garrulous
stage; as for getting him _in order_, I could do but little towards that;
however, there are one or two points of interest which may justify us in
printing. The swinging of his stick and not knowing the sailor of
Coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he wrote the lives in
the Bell Book particularly please me. I hope my own little introduction
is not egoistic; or rather I do not care if it is. It was that old
gentleman’s blood that brought me to Samoa.
By the by, vols. vii., viii., and ix. of Adams’s _History_ have never
come to hand; no more have the dictionaries.
Please send me _Stonehenge on Horse_, _Stories and Interludes_ by Barry
Pain, and _Edinburgh Sketches and Memoirs_ by David Masson. _The
Wrecker_ has turned up. So far as I have seen, it is very satisfactory,
but on pp. 548, 549, there has been a devil of a miscarriage. The two
Latin quotations instead of following each other being separated
(doubtless for printing considerations) by a line of prose. My
compliments to the printers; there is doubtless such a thing as good
printing, but there is such a thing as good sense.
The sequel to _Kidnapped_, _David Balfour_ by name, is about
three-quarters done and gone to press for serial publication. By what I
can find out it ought to be through hand with that and ready for volume
form early next spring.—Yours very sincerely,