Robert Louis Stevenson

“ Some of our boys behaved like real trumps. Perhaps the prettiest performance was that of our excellent Henry Simele, or, as we sometimes call him, Davy Balfour. Henry, I maun premeese, is a chief; the humblest Samoan recoils from emptying slops as you would from cheating at cards; now the last nights of our bad time when we had seven down together, it was enough to have made anybody laugh or cry to see Henry going the rounds with a slop-bucket and going inside the mosquito net of each of the sick, Protestant and Catholic alike, to pray with them. ”

“ I am young enough to have been annoyed, and altogether eject and renegate the whole idea of political affairs. Success in that field appears to be the organisation of failure enlivened with defamation of character ”

“ After the other seven were almost wholly recovered Henry lay down to influenza on his own account. He is but just better and it looks as though Fanny were about to bring up the rear. As for me, I am all right, though I WAS reduced to dictating ANNE in the deaf and dumb alphabet, which I think you will admit is a COMBLE.
Politics leave me extraordinary cold. ”

“ I give you your choice whether or not it should bear the subtitle, 'Experiences of a French prisoner in England.' We were just getting on splendidly with it, when this cursed mail arrived and requires to be attended to. It looks to me very like as if St. Ives would be ready before any of the others, but you know me and how impossible it is I should predict. The Amanuensis has her head quite turned and believes herself to be the author of this novel (and IS to some extent) - and as the creature (!) ”