Across the Plains with Other Memories and Essays

by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

ACROSS THE PLAINS

 

 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

EDINBURGH: PICTURESQUE NOTES
AN INLAND VOYAGE
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY
VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE
FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS
NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS
TREASURE ISLAND
THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS
A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
PRINCE OTTO
THE MERRY MEN
KIDNAPPED
UNDERWOODS
MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS
THE BLACK ARROW
THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE
BALLADS
FATHER DAMIEN: AN OPEN LETTER

(WITH MRS. STEVENSON)

THE DYNAMITER

 

 

ACROSS THE PLAINS

WITH OTHER

 

MEMORIES AND ESSAYS

 

BY

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

 

 

London

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1892

 

 

TO PAUL BOURGET.

Traveller and student and curious as you are, you will never have heard the name of Vailima, most likely not even that of Upolu, and Samoa itself may be strange to your ears. To these barbaric seats there came the other day a yellow book with your name on the title, and filled in every page with the exquisite gifts of your art. Let me take and change your own words: J'ai beau admirer les autres de toutes mes forces, c'est avec vous que je me complais à vivre.

R. L. S.

Vailima,
Upolu,
Samoa.

 

 

LETTER TO THE AUTHOR

 

My dear Stevenson,

You have trusted me with the choice and arrangement of these papers, written before you departed to the South Seas, and have asked me to add a preface to the volume. But it is your prose the public wish to read, not mine; and I am sure they will willingly be spared the preface. Acknowledgments are due in your name to the publishers of the several magazines from which the papers are collected, viz. Fraser's, Longman's, the Magazine of Art, and Scribner's. I will only add, lest any reader should find the tone of the concluding pieces less inspiriting than your wont, that they were written under circumstances of especial gloom and sickness. "I agree with you the lights seem a little turned down," so you write to me now; "the truth is I was far through, and came none too soon to the South Seas, where I was to recover peace of body and mind. And however low the lights, the stuff is true. . . ." Well, inasmuch as the South Sea sirens have breathed new life into you, we are bound to be heartily grateful to them, though as they keep you so far removed from us, it is difficult not to bear them a grudge; and if they would reconcile us quite, they have but to do two things more—to teach you new tales that shall charm us like your old, and to spare you, at least once in a while in summer, to climates within reach of us who are task-bound for ten months in the year beside the Thames.

Yours ever,

SIDNEY COLVIN.

February, 1892.

Contents

		Page
1.	Across the Plains	1
2.	The Old Pacific Capital	77
3.	Fontainebleau	108
4.	Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage'	143
5.	Random Memories	168
6.	Random Memories continued	189
7.	The Lantern-Bearers	206
8.	A Chapter on Dreams	229
9.	Beggars	253
10.	Letter to a Young Gentleman	272
11.	Pulvis et Umbra	289
12.	A Christmas Sermon	302