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The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls by Jacqueline M. Overton
page 56 of 114 (49%)
jest in it, a letter like what is written to real people in the world--I
am still flesh and blood--I should enjoy it. Simpson did the other day,
and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine--man alive I want
gossip."

Day in and day out he worked doggedly, fighting discouragement, with
little strength or inspiration to write anything very worth while.

To cap all, his landlady's little boy fell ill, and Stevenson, who had a
great love and sympathy for all children, helped to nurse him, and this
proved too much in the nervous and exhausted state he was in. The boy
recovered, but Stevenson fell ill again, and for six weeks hovered
between life and death.

This seems to have been the turning-point in his ill luck. Toward the
middle of February, as he slowly began to mend, he was cheered on by
long letters from home, full of anxiety for his health and advances of
money from his father, with strict instructions that from now on he was
no longer to stint and deny himself the bare necessities of life, as he
had been doing. Later, in April, came a telegram from Thomas Stevenson
saying that in future Louis was to count on an income of two hundred and
fifty pounds a year.

Cheered with the prospect of an easier road ahead of him, he struggled
back to life once more with a strong resolve to work harder and make
those at home proud of him.

"It was a considerable shock to my pride to break down," he wrote to a
friend, "but there it's done and can not be helped. Had my health held
out another month, I should have made a year's income, but breaking
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