This is my birthday, by the way - O, I said that before. Adieu. -
Ever your affectionate son,

R. L. STEVENSON.



Letter: TO MRS. SITWELL



MENTONE, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1873.

MY DEAR FRIEND, - I sat a long while up among the olive yards to-
day at a favourite corner, where one has a fair view down the
valley and on to the blue floor of the sea. I had a Horace with
me, and read a little; but Horace, when you try to read him fairly
under the open heaven, sounds urban, and you find something of the
escaped townsman in his descriptions of the country, just as
somebody said that Morris's sea-pieces were all taken from the
coast. I tried for long to hit upon some language that might catch
ever so faintly the indefinable shifting colour of olive leaves;
and, above all, the changes and little silverings that pass over
them, like blushes over a face, when the wind tosses great branches
to and fro; but the Muse was not favourable. A few birds scattered
here and there at wide intervals on either side of the valley sang
the little broken songs of late autumn and there was a great stir
of insect life in the grass at my feet. The path up to this coign
of vantage, where I think I shall make it a habit to ensconce