Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson
PRINCE OTTO - A ROMANCE
TO NELLY VAN DE GRIFT
(MRS. ADULFO SANCHEZ, OF MONTEREY)
AT last, after so many years, I have the pleasure of re-introducing
you to 'Prince Otto,' whom you will remember a very little fellow,
no bigger in fact than a few sheets of memoranda written for me by
your kind hand. The sight of his name will carry you back to an old
wooden house embowered in creepers; a house that was far gone in the
respectable stages of antiquity and seemed indissoluble from the
green garden in which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in
its younger days, and had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly
of a ship, and might have heard the seamen stamping and shouting and
the note of the boatswain's whistle. It will recall to you the
nondescript inhabitants now so widely scattered:- the two horses,
the dog, and the four cats, some of them still looking in your face
as you read these lines; - the poor lady, so unfortunately married
to an author; - the China boy, by this time, perhaps, baiting his
line by the banks of a river in the Flowery Land; - and in
particular the Scot who was then sick apparently unto death, and
whom you did so much to cheer and keep in good behaviour.
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