your justice, I appeal to your accounts, I appeal, in fine, to your
purse.

My sense of generosity forbids the receipt of more - my sense of
justice forbids the receipt of less - than half-a-crown. - Greeting
from, Sir, your most affectionate and needy son,

R. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON



WICK, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1868.

MY DEAR MOTHER, - . . . Wick lies at the end or elbow of an open
triangular bay, hemmed on either side by shores, either cliff or
steep earth-bank, of no great height. The grey houses of Pulteney
extend along the southerly shore almost to the cape; and it is
about half-way down this shore - no, six-sevenths way down - that
the new breakwater extends athwart the bay.

Certainly Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare, grey shores,
grim grey houses, grim grey sea; not even the gleam of red tiles;
not even the greenness of a tree. The southerly heights, when I
came here, were black with people, fishers waiting on wind and
night. Now all the S.Y.S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the
bay, and the Wick men stay indoors or wrangle on the quays with