Vailima, May 18th, 1894.

My Dear Colvin, — Your proposals for the Edinburgh edition are entirely to my mind. About the Amateur Emigrant, it shall go to you by this mail well slashed. If you like to slash some more on your own account, I give you permission. ’Tis not a great work; but since it goes to make up the two first volumes as proposed, I presume it has not been written in vain. — Miscellanies. I see with some alarm the proposal to print Juvenilia; does it not seem to you taking myself a little too much as Grandfather William? I am certainly not so young as I once was — a lady took occasion to remind me of the fact no later agone than last night. ‘Why don’t you leave that to the young men, Mr. Stevenson?’ said she — but when I remember that I felt indignant at even John Ruskin when he did something of the kind I really feel myself blush from head to heel. If you want to make up the first volume, there are a good many works which I took the trouble to prepare for publication and which have never been republished. In addition to roads and dancing Children, referred to by you, there is an Autumn effect in the portfolio, and a paper on Fontainebleau — Forest Notes is the name of it — in Cornhill. I have no objection to any of these being edited, say with a scythe, and reproduced. But I heartily abominate and reject the idea of reprinting the Pentland Rising. For God’s sake let me get buried first.

Tales and Fantasies. Vols. I. and II. have my hearty approval. But I think III. and IV. had better be crammed into one as you suggest. I will reprint none of the stories mentioned. They are below the mark. Well, I dare say the beastly Body-Snatcher has merit, and I am unjust to it from my recollections of the Pall Mall. But the other two won’t do. For vols. V. and VI., now changed into IV. and V., I propose the common title of South Sea yarns. There! These are all my differences o............