CHAPTER I AN ISLAND LANDFALL For nearly ten years my health had been declining; and for some while before I set forth upon my voyage, I believed I was come to the afterpiece of life, and had only the nurse and undertaker to expect. It was suggested that I should try the South Seas; and I was not unwilling to visit like a ghost, and be carried like a bale, among scenes that had attracted me in youth and... more...

ESSAYS INTRODUCTORY THE SO-CALLED HOMERIC HYMNS “The existing collection of the Hymns is of unknown editorship, unknown date, and unknown purpose,” says Baumeister.  Why any man should have collected the little preludes of five or six lines in length, and of purely conventional character, while he did not copy out the longer poems to which they probably served as preludes, is a mystery.  The... more...

PREFACE The Editor takes this opportunity to repeat what he has often said before, that he is not the author of the stories in the Fairy Books; that he did not invent them 'out of his own head.' He is accustomed to being asked, by ladies, 'Have you written anything else except the Fairy Books?' He is then obliged to explain that he has NOT written the Fairy Books, but, save these,... more...

Returning from Sydney at the end of October 1890, Stevenson and his wife at once took up their abode in the wooden four-roomed cottage, or “rough barrack,” as he calls it, which had been built for them in the clearing at Vailima during the months of their absence at Sydney and on their cruise in the Equator. Mr. Lloyd Osbourne in the meantime had started for England to wind up the family affairs at... more...

I.  THE GREAT IDEA The scene was a dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street.  To such caves many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall.  The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found by the... more...

INTRODUCTION An old Scottish lady, four generations ago, used to say, ‘It is a great comfort to think that, at the Day of Judgment, we shall know the whole truth about the Gowrie Conspiracy at last.’  Since the author, as a child, read ‘The Tales of a Grandfather,’ and shared King Jamie’s disappointment when there was no pot of gold, but an armed man, in the turret, he had supposed that we... more...

BOOK I—THE COMING OF PARIS Of the coming of Paris to the house of Menelaus, King of Lacedaemon, and of the tale Paris told concerning his past life. I. All day within the palace of the King   In Lacedaemon, was there revelry,Since Menelaus with the dawn did spring   Forth from his carven couch, and, climbing high   The tower of outlook, gazed along the dryWhite road that runs to Pylos through... more...

'Life is not all beer and skittles,' said a reflective sportsman, and all books are not fairy tales. In an imperfect state of existence, 'the peety of it is that we cannot have all things as we would like them.' Undeniably we would like all books to be fairy tales or novels, and at present most of them are. But there is another side to things, and we must face it. '"Life is... more...

Preface 'What cases are you engaged in at present?' 'Are you stopping many teeth just now?' 'What people have you converted lately?' Do ladies put these questions to the men—lawyers, dentists, clergymen, and so forth—who happen to sit next them at dinner parties? I do not know whether ladies thus indicate their interest in the occupations of their casual neighbours at... more...

INTRODUCTORY: OF MODERN ENGLISH POETRY To Mr. Arthur Wincott, Topeka, Kansas. Dear Wincott,—You write to me, from your “bright home in the setting sun,” with the flattering information that you have read my poor “Letters to Dead Authors.”  You are kind enough to say that you wish I would write some “Letters to Living Authors;” but that, I fear, is out of the question,—for me. A... more...