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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys
+and Girls, by Jacqueline M. Overton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls
+
+Author: Jacqueline M. Overton
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2005 [EBook #15547]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Govert Schipper and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE LIFE OF
+
+                        ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+                          FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                        JACQUELINE M. OVERTON
+
+
+
+
+                               NEW YORK
+
+                       CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                                 1933
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Robert Louis Stevenson, from a photograph by Mr. Lloyd
+Osbourne]
+
+
+
+
+                 TO THE BOYS AT THE YORKVILLE LIBRARY
+                                 AND
+                          TO ALL OTHER BOYS
+            WHO LOVE TO TRAMP AND CAMP AND SEEK ADVENTURE
+                         I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+                     WITH THE HOPE OF MAKING THEM
+                  BETTER FRIENDS WITH A MAN WHO ALSO
+                          LOVED THESE THINGS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                 PAGE
+
+   I. THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS              3
+
+  II. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON              16
+
+ III. THE LANTERN BEARER                  31
+
+  IV. EDINBURGH DAYS                      47
+
+   V. AMATEUR EMIGRANT                    72
+
+  VI. SCOTLAND AGAIN                      93
+
+ VII. SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA            108
+
+VIII. IN THE SOUTH SEAS                  121
+
+  IX. VAILIMA                            148
+
+      BIBLIOGRAPHY                       175
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Robert Louis Stevenson                          _Frontispiece_
+  From a photograph by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne
+                                                        FACING
+                                                         PAGE
+
+No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson's birthplace       18
+
+Colinton Manse                                              26
+
+Swanston Cottage                                            42
+
+Edinburgh Castle                                            64
+
+Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth                             98
+
+The Treasure Island map                                    100
+
+Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with "An Inland Voyage"  106
+
+Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus Saint Gaudens          112
+
+South Sea houses                                           130
+
+The house at Vailima                                       154
+
+A feast of chiefs                                          162
+
+The tomb of Stevenson on Væa Mountain                      172
+
+
+
+
+                             THE LIFE OF
+
+                        ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+                          FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+
+
+
+              "Write me as one who loves his fellowmen."
+                                                    --HUNT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS
+
+ "... For the sake
+  Of these, my kinsmen and my countrymen,
+  Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled
+  To plant a star for seamen."
+
+
+The pirate, Ralph the Rover, so legend tells, while cruising off the
+coast of Scotland searching for booty or sport, sank the warning bell on
+one of the great rocks, to plague the good Abbot of Arbroath who had put
+it there. The following year the Rover returned and perished himself on
+the same rock.
+
+In the life of one of Scotland's great men, Robert Louis Stevenson, we
+find proud record of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, having built
+Bell Rock Lighthouse on this same spot years afterward.
+
+No story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life would be complete that failed
+to mention the work done for Scotland and the world at large by the two
+men he held most dear, the engineers, his father and grandfather.
+
+When Robert Stevenson, his grandfather, received his appointment on the
+Board of Northern Lights the art of lighthouse building in Scotland had
+just begun. Its bleak, rocky shores were world-famous for their danger,
+and few mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast
+"was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of the
+Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old,
+an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer. The whole archipelago thus
+nightly plunged in darkness was shunned by seagoing vessels." [Footnote:
+Stevenson, "Family of Engineers."]
+
+The board at first proposed building four new lights, but afterward
+built many more, so that to-day Scotland stands foremost among the
+nations for the number and splendor of her coast lights.
+
+Their construction in those early days meant working against tremendous
+obstacles and dangers, and the life of the engineer was a hazardous one.
+
+"The seas into which his labors carried him were still scarce charted,
+the coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the
+convenience of any road; the isles in which he must sojourn were still
+partly savage. He must toss much in boats; he must often adventure much
+on horseback by dubious bridle-track through unfrequented wildernesses;
+he must sometimes plant his lighthouses in the very camp of wreckers.
+
+"The aid of steam was not yet. At first in random coasting sloop, and
+afterwards in the cutter belonging to the service, the engineer must ply
+and run amongst these multiplied dangers and sometimes late into the
+stormy autumn."
+
+All of which failed to daunt Robert Stevenson who loved action and
+adventure and the scent of things romantic.
+
+"Not only had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted, the supply
+of oil must be maintained and the men fed, in the same inaccessible and
+distant scenes, a whole service with its routine ... had to be called
+out of nothing; and a new trade (that of light-keeper) to be taught,
+recruited and organized."
+
+Bell Rock was only one of twenty lighthouses Robert Stevenson helped to
+build, but it was by far the most difficult one ... and even to-day,
+after it has been lighted for more than a hundred years, it still
+remains unique--a monument to his skill.
+
+Bell Rock was practically a reef completely submerged at full tide and
+only a few feet of its crest visible at low water. To raise a tower on
+it meant placing a foundation under water, a new and perilous
+experiment.
+
+"Work upon the rock in the earliest stages was confined to the calmest
+days of the summer season, when the tides were lowest, the water
+smoothest, and the wind in its calmest mood. Under such conditions the
+men were able to stay on the site for about five hours....
+
+"One distinct drawback was the necessity to establish a depot some
+distance from the erecting site. Those were the days before steam
+navigation, and the capricious sailing craft offered the only means of
+maintaining communication between rock and shore, and for the conveyance
+of men and materials to and fro....
+
+"A temporary beacon was placed on the reef, while adjacent to the site
+selected for the tower a smith's forge was made fast, so as to withstand
+the dragging motion of the waves when the rock was submerged. The men
+were housed on the _Smeaton_, which, during the spells of work on the
+rock, rode at anchor a short distance away in deep water." [Footnote:
+Talbot, "Lightships and Lighthouses."]
+
+Once the engineers were all but lost when the _Smeaton_ slipped her
+moorings and left them stranded on the rock.
+
+In spite of all the obstacles, the work was completed at the end of two
+years and the light was shown for the first time February 1, 1811.
+
+"I found Robert Stevenson an appreciative and intelligent companion,"
+writes Sir Walter Scott in his journal, speaking of a cruise he made
+among the islands of Scotland with a party of engineers. The notes made
+by him on this trip were used afterward in his two stories, "The Pirate"
+and "Lord of the Isles."
+
+"My grandfather was king in the service to his finger-tips," wrote Louis
+Stevenson. "All should go his way, from the principal light-keeper's
+coat to the assistant's fender, from the gravel in the garden walks to
+the bad smell in the kitchen, or the oil spots on the storeroom floor.
+It might be thought there was nothing more calculated to awaken men's
+resentment, and yet his rule was not more thorough than it was
+beneficent. His thought for the keepers was continual.... When a keeper
+was sick, he lent him his horse and sent him mutton and brandy from the
+ship.... They dwelt, many of them, in uninhabited isles or desert
+forelands, totally cut off from shops.
+
+"No servant of the Northern Lights came to Edinburgh but he was
+entertained at Baxter Place. There at his own table my grandfather sat
+down delightedly with his broad-spoken, homespun officers."
+
+As he grew old his "medicine and delight" was his annual trip among his
+lighthouses, but at length there came a time when this joy was taken
+away from him and there came "the end of all his cruising; the knowledge
+that he had looked the last on Sunburgh, and the wild crags of Skye, and
+the Sound of Mull; that he was never again to hear the surf break in
+Clashcarnock; never again to see lighthouse after lighthouse (all
+younger than himself, and the more, part of his own device) open in the
+hour of dusk their flower of fire, or the topaz and ruby interchange on
+the summit of Bell Rock."
+
+Throughout the rank and file of his men he was adored. "I have spoken
+with many who knew him; I was his grandson, and their words may very
+well have been words of flattery; but there was one thing that could
+not be affected, and that was the look that came over their faces at the
+name of Robert Stevenson."
+
+Of his family of thirteen children, three of his sons became engineers.
+Thomas Stevenson, the father of Robert Louis, like the others of his
+family, contributed largely to lighthouse building and harbor
+improvement, serving under his older brother, Allen, in building the
+Skerryvore, one of the most famous deep-sea lights erected on a
+treacherous reef off the west coast where, for more than forty years,
+one wreck after another had occurred.
+
+"From the navigator's point of view, the danger of this spot lay chiefly
+in the fact that it was so widely scattered. The ridge runs like a
+broken backbone for a distance of some eight miles.... In rough weather
+the whole of the rocks are covered, and the waves, beating heavily on
+the mass, convert the scene into one of indescribable tumult....
+
+"There was only one point where a tower could be placed, and this was
+so exposed that the safe handling of men and material constituted a
+grave responsibility."
+
+It was necessary to erect a tower one hundred and thirty feet high; "the
+loftiest and weightiest work of its character that had ever been
+contemplated up to this time....
+
+"The Atlantic swell, which rendered landing on the ridge precarious and
+hazardous, did not permit the men to be housed upon a floating home, as
+had been the practice in the early days of the Bell Rock tower. In order
+to permit the work to go forward as uninterruptedly as the sea would
+allow, a peculiar barrack was erected. It was a house on stilts, the
+legs being sunk firmly into the rock, with the living quarters perched
+some fifty feet up in the air.
+
+"Residence in this tower was eerie. The men climbed the ladder and
+entered a small room, which served the purposes of kitchen, living-room,
+and parlor....
+
+"When a storm was raging, the waves, as they combed over the rock,
+shook the legs violently and scurried under the floor in seething foam.
+Now and again a roller, rising higher than its fellows, broke upon the
+rock and sent a mass of water against the flooring to hammer at the
+door. Above the living-room were the sleeping quarters, high and dry,
+save when a shower of spray fell upon the roof and walls like heavy
+hail.... The men, however, were not perturbed. Sleeping, even under such
+conditions, was far preferable to doubtful rest in a bunk upon an
+attendant vessel, rolling and pitching with the motion of the sea. They
+had had a surfeit of such experience ... while the barrack was under
+erection.
+
+"For two years it withstood the seas without incident, and the engineer
+and men came to regard the eyrie as safe as a house on shore. But one
+night the little colony received a shock. The angry Atlantic got one or
+two of its trip-hammer blows well home, and smashed the structure to
+fragments. Fortunately, at the time it was untenanted."
+
+No time was lost in rebuilding the barrack and this time it withstood
+all tests until it was torn down after Skerryvore was finished.
+
+"While the foundations were being prepared, and until the barrack was
+constructed, the men ran other terrible risks every morning and night
+landing upon and leaving the polished surface of the reef. Five months
+during the summer was the working season, but even then many days and
+weeks were often lost owing to the swell being too great to permit the
+rowing boat to come alongside. The engineer relates that the work was 'a
+good lesson in the school of patience,' because the delays were frequent
+and galling, while every storm which got up and expended its rage upon
+the reef left its mark indelibly among the engineer's stock in trade.
+Cranes and other materials were swept away as if they were corks;
+lashings, no matter how strong, were snapped like pack-threads.
+
+"Probably the worst experience was when the men on the rock were
+weather-bound for seven weeks during one season.... Their provisions
+sank to a very low level, they ran short of fuel, their sodden clothing
+was worn to rags....
+
+"Six years were occupied in the completion of the work, and, as may be
+imagined, the final touches were welcomed with thankfulness by those who
+had been concerned in the enterprise."
+
+It was in meteorological researches and illumination of lighthouses,
+however, that Thomas Stevenson did his greatest work. It was he who
+brought to perfection the revolving light now so generally used.
+
+In spite of this and other valuable inventions his name has remained
+little known, owing to the fact that none of his inventions were ever
+patented. The Stevensons believed that, holding government appointments,
+any original work they did belonged to the nation. "A patent not only
+brings in money but spreads reputation," writes his son, "and my
+father's instruments enter anonymously into a hundred light rooms and
+are passed anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the least
+considerable patent would stand out and tell its author's story."
+
+He was beloved among a wide circle of friends and the esteem of those in
+his profession was shown when in 1884 they chose him for president of
+the Royal Society of Edinburgh. To the general public, however, he
+remained unknown in spite of the fact that "His lights were in all parts
+of the world guiding the mariners."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+ "As from the house your mother sees
+  You playing round the garden trees,
+  So you may see, if you will look
+  Through the window of this book,
+  Another child, far, far away,
+  And in another garden, play."
+
+            --"Child's Garden of Verses."
+
+
+Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born at No. 8 Howard Place,
+Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1850.
+
+In 1852 the family moved from Howard Place to Inverleith Terrace, and
+two years later to No. 17 Heriot Row, which remained their home for many
+years.
+
+As a child Louis was very delicate and often ill, for years hardly a
+winter passed that he did not spend many days in bed.
+
+Edinburgh in winter is extremely damp and he tells us: "Many winters I
+never crossed the threshold, but used to lie on my face on the nursery
+floor, chalking or painting in water-colors the pictures in the
+illustrated newspapers; or sit up in bed with a little shawl pinned
+about my shoulders, to play with bricks or what not."
+
+The diverting history of "Hop-O'-My-Thumb" and the "Seven-League Boots,"
+"Little Arthur's History of England," "Peter Parley's Historical Tales,"
+and "Harry's Ladder to Learning" were books which he delighted to pore
+over and their pages bore many traces of his skill with the pencil and
+paint-brush.
+
+Those who have read the "Child's Garden of Verses" already know the
+doings of his childish days, for although those rhymes were not written
+until he was a grown man he was "one of the few who do not forget their
+own lives" and "through the windows of this book" gives us a vivid and
+living picture of the boy who dwelt so much in a world of his own with
+his quaint thoughts.
+
+If his body was frail his spirit was strong and his power of
+imagination so great that he cheered himself through many a weary day by
+playing he was "captain of a tidy little ship," a soldier, a fierce
+pirate, an Indian chief, or an explorer in foreign lands. Miles he
+travelled in his little bed.
+
+ "I have just to shut my eyes,
+  To go sailing through the skies--
+  To go sailing far away
+  To the pleasant Land of Play"
+
+he says.
+
+[Illustration: No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson's birthplace]
+
+In spite of his power for amusing himself, days like these would have
+gone far harder had it not been for two devoted people, his mother and
+his nurse, Alison Cunningham or "Cummie" as he called her. His mother
+was devoted to him in every way and encouraged his love for reading and
+story-making. She kept a diary of his progress from day to day, and
+treasured every picture he drew or scrap he wrote. Cummie came to him as
+a Torryburn lassie when he was eighteen months old and was like a second
+mother to him. She not only cared for his bodily comforts but was his
+friend and comrade as well. She sang for him, danced for him, spun fine
+tales of pirates and smugglers, and read to him so dramatically that his
+mind was fired then and there with a longing for travel and adventure
+which he never lost. When they took their walks through the streets
+together Cummie had many stories to tell him of Scotland and Edinburgh
+in the old days. For Edinburgh is a wonderful old city with a wonderful
+history full of tales of stirring adventure and romance. "For centuries
+it was a capitol thatched with heather and more than once, in the evil
+days of English invasion, it has gone up in flames to Heaven, a beacon
+to ships at sea.... It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not
+only on Greenside or by the King's Stables, where set tournaments were
+fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the royal
+presence, but in every alley where there was room to cross swords.... In
+the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows'
+nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat
+James VI. would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the
+goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the
+castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal
+fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors,
+sat day and night 'with tearful psalms.'... In the Grassmarket,
+stiff-necked covenanting heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but
+not less honorable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent farewell
+to sun, moon and stars and earthly friendships, or died silent to the
+roll of the drums. Down by yon outlet rode Grahame of Claverhouse and
+his thirty dragoons, with the town beating to arms behind their horses'
+tails--a sorry handful thus riding for their lives, but with a man at
+their head who was to return in a different temper, make a bold dash
+that staggered Scotland, and die happily in the thick of the fight....
+
+"The palace of Holyrood is a house of many memories.... Great people of
+yore, kings and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors played their
+stately farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing
+has lasted deep into the night, murder has been done in its chambers.
+There Prince Charlie held his phantom levées and in a very gallant
+manner represented a fallen dynasty for some hours....
+
+"There is an old story of the subterranean passage between the castle
+and Holyrood and a bold Highland piper who volunteered to explore its
+windings. He made his entrance by the upper end, playing a strathspey;
+the curious footed it after him down the street, following his descent
+by the sound of the chanter from below; until all of a sudden, about the
+level of St. Giles the music came abruptly to an end, and the people in
+the street stood at fault with hands uplifted. Whether he choked with
+gases, or perished in a quag, or was removed bodily by the Evil One,
+remains a point of doubt, but the piper has never again been seen or
+heard of from that day to this. Perhaps he wandered down into the land
+of Thomas the Rhymer, and some day, when it is least expected, may take
+a thought to revisit the sunlit upper world. That will be a strange
+moment for the cabmen on the stands beside St. Giles, when they hear the
+crone of his pipes reascending from the earth below their horses' feet."
+
+In Edinburgh to-day there are armed men and cannon in the castle high up
+on the great rock above you: "You may see the troops marshalled on the
+high parade, and at night after the early winter evenfall and in the
+morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over
+Edinburgh the sounds of drums and bugles." (Stevenson, "Essay on
+Edinburgh.")
+
+Long before Louis could write he made up verses and stories for himself,
+and Cummie wrote them down for him. "I thought they were rare nonsense
+then," she said, little dreaming that these same bits of "rare
+nonsense" were the beginnings of what was to make "her boy" famous
+across two seas in years to come.
+
+He writes of her when speaking of long nights he lay awake unable to
+sleep because of a troublesome cough: "How well I remember her lifting
+me out of bed, carrying me to the window and showing me one or two lit
+windows up in Queen Street across the dark belt of garden, where also,
+we told each other, there might be sick little boys and their nurses
+waiting, like us, for the morning."
+
+Her devotion to him had its reward in the love he gave her all his life.
+One of his early essays written when he was twenty and published in the
+_Juvenilia_ was called "Nurses." Fifteen years later came the
+publication of the "Child's Garden of Verses" with a splendid tribute to
+her as a dedication. He sent her copies of all his books, wrote letters
+to her, and invited her to visit him. She herself tells that the last
+time she ever saw him he said to her, "before a room full of people,
+'It's _you_ that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie,' 'Me, Master
+Lou,' I said, 'I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.' 'Ay,
+woman,' said he, 'but it was the good dramatic way ye had of reciting
+the hymns.'"
+
+When he was six years old his Uncle David offered a Bible picture-book
+as a prize to the nephews who could write the best history of Moses.
+
+This was Louis's first real literary attempt. He was not able to write
+himself, but dictated to his mother and illustrated the story and its
+cover with pictures which he designed and painted himself.
+
+He won the prize and from that time, his mother says, "it was the desire
+of his heart to be an author."
+
+During the winter of 1856-57 his favorite cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray
+Stevenson, usually called Bob, visited them; a great treat for Louis,
+not only because his ill health kept him from making many companions of
+his own age, but because Bob loved many of the same things he did and to
+"make believe" was as much a part of his life as Louis's. Many fine
+games they had together; built toy theatres, the scenery and characters
+for which they bought for a "penny plain and twopence colored," and were
+never tired of dressing up. One of their chief delights, he says, was in
+"rival kingdoms of our own invention--Nosingtonia and Encyclopædia, of
+which we were perpetually drawing maps." Even the eating of porridge at
+breakfast became a game. Bob ate his with sugar and said it was an
+island covered with snow with here a mountain and there a valley; while
+Louis's was an island flooded by milk which gradually disappeared bit by
+bit.
+
+In the spring and summer his mother took him for short trips to the
+watering-places near Edinburgh. But the spot unlike all others for a
+real visit was at Colinton Manse, the home of his grandfather, the
+Reverend Lewis Balfour, at Colinton, on the Water of Leith, five miles
+southwest of Edinburgh. Here he spent glorious days. Not only was there
+the house and garden, both rare spots for one of an exploring turn of
+mind, but, best of all, there were the numerous cousins of his own age
+sent out from India, where their parents were, to be nursed and educated
+under the loving eye of Aunt Jane Balfour, for whom he wrote:
+
+ "Chief of our aunts--not only I,
+  But all the dozen nurslings cry--
+  What did the other children do?
+  And what was childhood, wanting you?"
+
+[Illustration: Colinton Manse]
+
+If Louis lacked brothers and sisters he had no dearth of cousins, fifty
+in all they numbered, many of them near his own age. Alan Stevenson,
+Henrietta and Willie Traquair seem to have been his favorite chums at
+Colinton.
+
+Of his grandfather Balfour he says: "We children admired him, partly for
+his beautiful face and silver hair ... partly for the solemn light in
+which we beheld him once a week, the observed of all observers in the
+pulpit. But his strictness and distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old
+age, slow blood, and settled habits, oppressed us with a kind of terror.
+When not abroad, he sat much alone writing sermons or letters to his
+scattered family.... The study had a redeeming grace in many Indian
+pictures gaudily colored and dear to young eyes.... When I was once sent
+in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went, quaking indeed with fear,
+but at the same time glowing with hope that, if I said it well, he might
+reward me with an Indian picture."
+
+"There were two ways of entering the Manse garden," he says, "one the
+two-winged gate that admitted the old phaeton and the other a door for
+pedestrians on the side next the kirk.... On the left hand were the
+stables, coach-houses and washing houses, clustered around a small,
+paved court.... Once past the stable you were fairly within the garden.
+On summer afternoons the sloping lawn was literally _steeped_ in
+sunshine....
+
+"The wall of the church faces the manse, but the church yard is on a
+level with the top of the wall ... and the tombstones are visible from
+the enclosure of the manse.... Under the retaining wall was a somewhat
+dark pathway, extending from the stable to the far end of the garden,
+and called the 'witches' walk' from a game we used to play in it....
+Even out of the 'witches' walk' you saw the Manse facing toward you,
+with its back to the river and the wooded bank, and the bright
+flower-plots and stretches of comfortable vegetables in front and on
+each side of it; flower plots and vegetable borders, by the way, on
+which it was almost death to set foot, and about which we held a curious
+belief,--namely, that my grandfather went round and measured any
+footprints that he saw, to compare the measurement at night with the
+boots put out for brushing; to avoid which we were accustomed, by a
+strategic movement of the foot to make the mark longer....
+
+"So much for the garden; now follow me into the house. On entering the
+door you had before you a stone paved lobby.... There stood a case of
+foreign birds, two or three marble deities from India and a lily of the
+Nile in a pot, and at the far end the stairs shut in the view. With how
+many games of 'tig' or brick-building in the forenoon is the long low
+dining room connected in my mind! The storeroom was a most voluptuous
+place, with its piles of biscuit boxes and spice tins, the rack for
+buttered eggs, the little window that let in the sunshine and the
+flickering shadows of leaves, and the strong sweet odor of everything
+that pleaseth the taste of men....
+
+"Opposite the study was the parlor, a small room crammed full of
+furniture and covered with portraits, with a cabinet at the side full of
+foreign curiosities, and a sort of anatomical trophy on the top. During
+a grand cleaning of the apartment I remember all the furniture was
+ranged on a circular grass plot between the churchyard and the house. It
+was a lovely still summer evening, and I stayed out, climbing among the
+chairs and sofas. Falling on a large bone or skull, I asked what it was.
+Part of an albatross, auntie told me. 'What is an albatross?' I asked,
+and then she described to me this great bird nearly as big as a house,
+that you saw out miles away from any land, sleeping above the vast and
+desolate ocean. She told me that the _Ancient Mariner_ was all about
+one; and quoted with great _verve_ (she had a duster in her hand, I
+recollect)--
+
+ 'With my crossbow
+  I shot the albatross.'
+
+... Willie had a crossbow, but up to this date I had never envied him
+its possession. After this, however, it became one of the objects of my
+life."
+
+With many playmates, free to roam and romp as he chose, his illness
+forgotten, it is no wonder he says he felt as if he led two lives, one
+belonging to Edinburgh and one to the country, and that Colinton ever
+remained an enchanted spot to which it was always hard to say good-by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LANTERN BEARER
+
+ "Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
+  In school, some graduate of the field or street,
+  Who shall become a master of the art,
+  An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
+  Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
+  For lands not yet laid down on any chart."
+
+                                     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+School days began for Louis in 1859, but were continually interrupted by
+illness, travel, and change of school. His father did not believe in
+forcing him to study; so he roamed through school according to his own
+sweet will, attending classes where he cared to, interesting himself in
+the subjects that appealed to him--Latin, French, and
+mathematics--neglecting the others and bringing home no prizes, to
+Cummie's distress.
+
+Certain books were his prime favorites at this time. "Robinson Crusoe,"
+he says, "and some of the books of Mayne Reid and a book called Paul
+Blake--Swiss Family Robinson also. At these I played, conjured up their
+scenes and delighted to hear them rehearsed to seventy times seven.
+
+"My father's library was a spot of some austerity; the proceedings of
+learned societies, cyclopædias, physical science and above all, optics
+held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and
+corners that anything legible existed as if by accident. Parents'
+Assistant, Rob Roy, Waverley and Guy Mannering, Pilgrim's Progress,
+Voyages of Capt. Woods Rogers, Ainsworth's Tower of London and four old
+volumes of Punch--these were among the chief exceptions.
+
+"In these latter which made for years the chief of my diet, I very early
+fell in love (almost as soon as I could spell) with the Snob Papers. I
+knew them almost by heart ... and I remember my surprise when I found
+long afterward that they were famous, and signed with a famous name; to
+me, as I read and admired them, they were the works of Mr. Punch."
+
+Two old Bibles interested him particularly. They had belonged to his
+grandfather Stevenson and contained many marked passages and notes
+telling how they had been read aboard lighthouse tenders and on tours of
+inspection among the islands.
+
+After he was thirteen his health was greatly improved and he was able to
+enjoy the comradeship of other lads, though he never cared greatly for
+sports. He was the leader of a number of boys who used to go about
+playing tricks on the neighbors--"tapping on their windows after
+nightfall, and all manner of wild freaks."
+
+"Crusoing" was a favorite game and its name stood for all picnicking in
+the open air, building bonfires and cooking apples, but the crowning
+sport of all was "Lantern Bearing," a game invented by himself and
+shared by a dozen of his cronies.
+
+"Toward the end of September," he says, "when school time was drawing
+near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from
+our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern....
+We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them,
+such was the rigor of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled
+noxiously of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would
+always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them
+merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat
+asked for nothing more.
+
+"When two of these asses met there would be an anxious, 'Have you your
+lantern?' and a gratified 'Yes,' That was the shibboleth, and a very
+needful one too; for as it was the rule to keep our glory contained,
+none could recognize a lantern-bearer, unless like a polecat, by the
+smell.
+
+"The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night,
+the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a ray escaping whether to
+conduct your footsteps or make your glory public, a mere pillar of
+darkness in the dark, and all the while, deep down in the privacy of
+your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt and exult
+and sing over the knowledge."
+
+In later years one of the Lantern Bearers describes Louis as he was
+then. "A slender, long legged boy in pepper and salt tweeds, with an
+undescribable influence that forced us to include him in our play as a
+looker on, critic and slave driver.... No one had the remotest intention
+of competing with R.L.S. in story making, and his tales, had we known
+it, were such as the world would listen to in silence and wonder."
+
+At home and at his last school he was always starting magazines. The
+stories were illustrated with much color and the magazines circulated
+among the boys for a penny a reading. One was called _The Sunbeam
+Magazine_, an illustrated miscellany of fact, fiction, and fun, and
+another _The School Boy Magazine_. The latter contained four stories and
+its readers must have been hard to satisfy if they did not have their
+fill of horrors--"regular crawlers," Louis called them. In the first
+tale, "The Adventures of Jan Van Steen," the hero is left hidden in a
+boiler under which a fire is lit. The second is a "Ghost Story" of
+robbers in a deserted castle.... The third is called, "by curious
+anticipation of a story he was to write later on, 'The Wreckers.'"
+
+Numerous plays and novels he began but they eventually found their fate
+in the trash basket. An exception to this was a small green pamphlet of
+twenty pages called "The Pentland Rising, a page of history, 1666." It
+was published through his father's interest on the two-hundredth
+anniversary of the fight at Rullion Green. This event in Scotland's
+history had been impressed on his mind by the numerous stories. Cummie
+had told him of the Covenanters and the fact that they had spent the
+night before their defeat in the town of Colinton.
+
+From the time he was a little chap, balancing on the limb of an
+apple-tree in the Colinton garden trying to see what kind of a world
+lay beyond the garden wall, Louis had had a longing to travel and see
+sights. This began to find satisfaction now.
+
+His father took him on a trip around the coast of Fife, visiting the
+harbor lights. The little towns along the coast were already familiar to
+him by the stories of the past. Dunfermline, where, according to the
+ballad, Scotland's king once "sat in his tower drinking blood-red wine";
+Kerkcaldy, where the witches used to sink "tall ships and honest
+mariners in the North Sea"; and "Wemyss with its bat-haunted caves,
+where the Chevalier Johnstone on his flight from Colloden passed a night
+of superstitious terrors."
+
+Later the family made a trip to the English Lakes and in the winter of
+the same year to the south of France, where they stayed two months, then
+making a tour through Italy and Switzerland. The following Christmas
+found Louis and his mother again in Mentone, where they stayed until
+spring.
+
+French was one of his favorite studies at school, and now after a few
+months among French people he was able to speak fluently. Indeed, in
+after life he was often mistaken for a Frenchman.
+
+His French teacher on his second visit to Mentone gave him no regular
+lessons, but "merely talked to him in French, teaching him piquet and
+card tricks, introducing him to various French people and taking him to
+concerts and other places; so, his mother remarks, like Louis' other
+teachers at home I think they found it pleasanter to talk to him then to
+teach him."
+
+After their return to Edinburgh came the time when, his school days
+finished, Louis must make up his mind what his career is to be and train
+himself for it.
+
+Even then he knew what he wanted to do was to write. He had fitted up a
+room on the top floor at Heriot Row as a study and spent hours there
+covering paper with stories or trying to describe in the very best way
+scenes which had impressed him. Most of these were discarded when
+finished. "I liked doing them indeed," he said, "but when done I could
+see they were rubbish." He never doubted, however, that some day his
+attempts would prove worth while, if he could only devote his time to
+learning to write and write well.
+
+His father, he knew, had different plans for him, however. Of course,
+Louis would follow in his footsteps and be the sixth Stevenson to hold a
+place on the Board of Northern Lights. So, although he had little heart
+in the work, he entered the University of Edinburgh and spent the next
+three and a half years studying for a science degree.
+
+The summer of 1868 he was sent with an engineering party to Anstruther,
+on the coast, where a breakwater was being built. There he had his first
+opportunity of seeing some of the practical side of engineering. It was
+rough work, but he enjoyed it. Later he spent three weeks on Earraid
+Island, off Mull, a place which left a strong impression on his mind and
+figured afterward as the spot where David Balfour was shipwrecked.
+
+Among the experiences at that time which pleased him most was a chance
+to descend in a diver's dress to the foundation of the harbor they were
+building. In his essays, "Random Memories," he tells of the "dizzy
+muddleheaded joy" he had in his surroundings, swaying like a reed, and
+grabbing at the fish which darted past him.
+
+In writing afterward of these years he says: "What I gleaned I am sure I
+do not know, but indeed I had already my own private determination to be
+an author ... though I haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved the
+place for the sake of the sunshine, the thrilling sea-side air, the wash
+of the waves on the sea face, the green glimmer of the diver's helmets
+far below.... My own genuine occupation lay elsewhere and my only
+industry was in the hours when I was not on duty. I lodged with a
+certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade, and there as soon as dinner
+was despatched ... drew my chair to the table and proceeded to pour
+forth literature.
+
+"I wish to speak with sympathy of my education as an engineer. It takes
+a man into the open air; keeps him hanging about harbor sides, the
+richest form of idling; it carries him to wild islands; it gives him a
+taste of the genial danger of the sea ... and when it has done so it
+carries him back and shuts him in an office. From the roaring skerry and
+the wet thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk, and
+with a memory full of ships and seas and perilous headlands and shining
+pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of
+drawing or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of consecutive
+figures."
+
+"The roaring skerry and the tossing boat," appealed to him as they had
+to his grandfather before him, but they did not balance his dislike for
+the "office and the stool" or make him willing to devote his time and
+energy to working for them, so his university record was very poor. "No
+one ever played the truant with more deliberate care," he says, "and no
+one ever had more certificates (of attendance) for less education."
+
+One thing that he gained from his days at the university was the
+friendship of Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He was fifteen years older than
+Louis, but they had many common interests and the professor had much
+good influence over him. He was one of the first to see promise in his
+writing and encouraged him to go on with it.
+
+Both the professor and Mrs. Jenkin were much interested in dramatics and
+each year brought a group of friends together at their house for private
+theatricals. Stevenson was a constant visitor at their home, joining
+heartily in these plays and looking forward to them, although he never
+took any very important part.
+
+After Professor Jenkin's death Stevenson wrote his biography, and says
+it was a "mingled pain and pleasure to dig into the past of a dead
+friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter."
+
+About this time Thomas Stevenson bought Swanston Cottage in the Pentland
+Hills, about five miles from Edinburgh, and for the next fourteen years
+the family spent their summers there, and Louis often went out in
+winter as well. It ever remained one of his favorite spots and with
+Colinton stood out as a place that meant much in his life.
+
+[Illustration: Swanston Cottage]
+
+These years saw great change in him; from a frank and happy child he had
+grown into a lonely, moody boy making few friends and shunning the
+social life that his father's position in Edinburgh offered him. He
+describes himself as a "lean, ugly, unpopular student," but those who
+knew him never applied the term "ugly" to him at any time.
+
+At Swanston he explored the hills alone and grew to know them so well
+that the Pentland country ever remained vividly in his memory and found
+its way into many of his stories, notably "St. Ives," where he describes
+Swanston as it was when they first made it their summer home.
+
+Many solitary winter evenings he spent there rereading his favorite
+novels, particularly Dumas's "Vicomte de Bragelonne," which always
+pleased him. "Shakespeare has served me best," he said. "Few living
+friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or
+Rosalind. Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is
+D'Artagnan, the elderly D'Artagnan of the 'Vicomte de Bragelonne.'
+
+"I would return in the early night from one of my patrols with the
+shepherd, a friendly face would meet me in the door, a friendly
+retriever scurry up stairs to fetch my slippers, and I would sit down
+with the Vicomte for a long, silent, solitary lamp-lit evening by the
+fire."
+
+At Swanston he first began to really write, "bad poetry," he says, and
+during his solitary rambles fought with certain problems that perplexed
+him.
+
+Here he made the acquaintance of the Scotch gardener, Robert Young, and
+John Todd, the "Roaring Shepherd, the oldest herd on the Pentlands,"
+whom he accompanied on his rounds with the sheep, listening to his tales
+told in broad Scotch of the highland shepherds in the old days when "he
+himself often marched flocks into England, sleeping on the hillsides
+with his caravan; and by his account it was rough business not without
+danger. The drove roads lay apart from habitation; the drivers met in
+the wilderness, as to-day the deep sea fishers meet off the banks in the
+solitude of the Atlantic."
+
+All this time Louis was idling through the university, knowing that in
+the end he would make nothing of himself as an engineer and dreading to
+confess it to his father. At length, however, his failure in his studies
+came to Thomas Stevenson's attention, and, on being questioned about it
+"one dreadful day" as they were walking together, the boy frankly
+admitted that his heart was not with the work and he cared for nothing
+but to be able to write.
+
+While at school his father had encouraged him to follow his own bent in
+his studies and reading, but when it came to the point of choosing his
+life-work, there ought to be no question of doubt. The only natural
+thing for Louis to do was to carry on the great and splendid work that
+he himself had helped to build up. That the boy should have other plans
+of his own surprised and troubled him. Literature, he said, was no
+profession, and thus far Louis had not done enough to prove he had a
+claim for making it his career.
+
+After much debate it was finally decided that he should give up
+engineering, but should enter the law school and study to be admitted to
+the bar. This would not only give him an established profession, but
+leave him a little time to write as well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+EDINBURGH DAYS
+
+ "I am fevered with the sunset,
+  I am fretful with the bay,
+  For the wander-thirst is on me
+  And my soul is in Cathay.
+
+ "There's a schooner in the offing,
+  With her topsails shot with fire,
+  And my heart has gone aboard her
+  For the island of Desire."
+
+                     --RICHARD HOVEY.
+
+
+In spite of the fact that his law studies now left him an opportunity
+for the work he wanted so much to do, Louis was far from happy, for
+between his parents and himself, who had always been the best of
+friends, there were many misunderstandings.
+
+Thomas Stevenson was bitterly disappointed that his only son should
+choose to be what he called "an idler"--generous to a fault and always
+out of money, dressing in a careless and eccentric way, which both
+amused and annoyed his friends and caused him to be ridiculed by
+strangers, preferring to roam the streets of old Edinburgh scraping
+acquaintance with the fishwives and dock hands, rather than staying at
+home and mingling in the social circle to which his parents belonged.
+But his father was still more troubled by certain independent religious
+opinions, far different from those in which he had been reared, that
+Louis adopted at this time.
+
+How any good result could come from all this neither his father nor
+mother could see, and with the loss of their sympathy he was thrown upon
+himself and was lonely and rebellious.
+
+He longed to get away from it all, to quit Edinburgh with its harsh
+climate, and often on his walks he leaned over the great bridge that
+joins the New Town with the Old "and watched the trains smoking out from
+under, and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies." He
+longed to go with them "to that Somewhere-else of the imagination where
+all troubles are supposed to end."
+
+It was a comfort to him at this time to remember other Scotchmen,
+Jeffries, Burns, Fergusson, Scott, Carlyle, and others, who had roamed
+these same streets before him, not a few of them fighting with the same
+problems he faced in their struggle to win their ideal.
+
+This unhappy time, this "Greensickness," as he called it, came to an
+end, however, through the help of what Louis had always secretly longed
+for--friends. Several whom he met at this time influenced him, but first
+of them all he put his cousin Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (Bob), who
+returned to Edinburgh about this time from Paris, where he had been
+studying art.
+
+Louis says: "The mere return of Bob changed at once and forever the
+course of my life; I can give you an idea of my relief only by saying
+that I was at last able to breathe.... I was done with the sullens for
+good.... I had got a friend to laugh with."
+
+Here at last was a companion who understood him and sympathized with
+what he was trying to do. Since as children they had made believe
+together in their rival kingdoms of "Nosingtonia" and "Encyclopædia"
+they had had many traits and tastes in common. They now began where they
+had left off and proceeded to enjoy themselves once more by all sorts of
+wild pranks and gay expeditions.
+
+The Speculative Society became another great source of pleasure. It was
+an old society and had numbered among its members such men of note as
+Scott, Jeffrey, Robert Emmet, and others. Once a week from November to
+March the "Spec," as it was called, met in rooms in the University of
+Edinburgh. An essay was read and debates followed with much hot
+discussion, which delighted Stevenson. "Oh, I do think the Spec is about
+the best thing in Edinburgh," he said enthusiastically.
+
+Sir Walter Simpson, son of the famous doctor, Sir James Simpson, who
+discovered chloroform, became another chum about this time, and for the
+next ten years they were much together. He likewise was studying law and
+was a near neighbor. The Simpsons kept open house, and it was the custom
+for a group of cronies to drop in at all hours of day and night. Louis
+was among those who came oftenest, and Sir Walter's sister writes: "He
+would frequently drop in to dinner with us, and of an evening he had the
+run of the smoking room. After ten p.m. the 'open sesame' to our door
+was a rattle on the letter box and Louis' fancy for the mysterious was
+whetted by this admittance by secret sign, and we liked his special
+rat-a-tat for it was the forerunner of an hour or two of talk."
+
+They teased him about his queer clothes and laughed at some of his wild
+ideas, but he seldom was angry at them for it and never stayed away very
+long.
+
+With them he often skated on Duddington Loch or canoed on the Firth of
+Forth. One summer he and Sir Walter yachted off the west coast of
+Scotland, and still another year, when longing for further wandering
+possessed them, they made a trip in canoes through the inland waters of
+Belgium from Antwerp to Brussels, and then into France and by the rivers
+Sambre and Oise nearly to Paris.
+
+In the "Inland Voyage," where Stevenson describes this trip, he calls
+Sir Walter and his canoe "Cigarette" while he was "Arethusa." Adventures
+were plentiful, and they aroused much curiosity among the dwellers on
+the banks, with whom they made friends as they went along.
+
+Once Arethusa was all but drowned, when his canoe was overturned by the
+rapids; and on several occasions, when they applied for a night's
+lodging, they were suspected of being tramps or peddlers because of
+their bedraggled appearance.
+
+One evening after a hard day's paddling in the rain they landed tired,
+wet, and hungry at the little town of La Fère. "The Cigarette and I
+could not sufficiently congratulate each other on the prospect," says
+the Arethusa, "for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fère.
+Such a dinner as we were going to eat. Such beds as we were going to
+sleep in, and all the while the rain raining on homeless folk over all
+the poplared country-side. It made our mouths water. The inn bore the
+name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which.
+But I shall never forget how spacious and how eminently comfortable it
+looked as we drew near.... A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we
+sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and
+smelt like a garden of things to eat.
+
+"Into this ... you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a
+pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon
+his arm. I do not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it
+through a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps
+of cook-men, who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us
+with surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady however; there she
+was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. Her I
+asked politely--too politely, thinks the Cigarette--if we could have
+beds, she surveying us coldly from head to foot.
+
+"'You will find beds in the suburb,' she remarked. 'We are too busy for
+the like of you.'
+
+"If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of
+wine I felt sure we could put things right, so I said, 'If we can not
+sleep, we may at least dine,' and was for depositing my bag.
+
+"What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
+landlady's face! She made a run at us and stamped her foot.
+
+"'Out with you--out of the door!' she screeched.
+
+"I do not know how it happened, but the next moment we were out in the
+rain and darkness. This was not the first time that I have been refused
+a lodging. Often and often I have planned what I would do if such a
+misadventure happened to me again, and nothing is easier to plan. But to
+put in execution, with a heart boiling at the indignity? Try it, try it
+only once, and tell me what you did."
+
+Frequently on this trip the Arethusa's odd dress and foreign looks led
+him to be taken for a spy. It was not long after the Franco-Prussian
+war, and all sorts of rumors of suspicious characters were afloat. Once
+he was actually arrested and thrown into a dungeon because he could show
+no passport, and the commissary refused to believe he was English and
+puzzled his head over the scraps of notes and verses found in his
+knapsack.
+
+He was rescued by the faithful Cigarette, who finally convinced the
+officials that they were British gentlemen travelling in this odd way
+for pleasure, and the things in his friend's bag were not plans against
+the government, but merely scraps of poetry and notes on their travels
+that he liked to amuse himself by making as they went along. [Footnote:
+This incident is told in the "Epilogue to An Inland Voyage."]
+
+The canoe trips ended in a visit to the artists' colony at
+Fontainebleau, where Bob Stevenson and a brother of Sir Walter's were
+spending their summer. This place always had a particular attraction for
+Louis and he spent many weeks both there and at Grez near by during the
+next few years.
+
+The free and easy life led by the artists suited him exactly, although
+he found it hard to accomplish any work of his own, but dreamed and
+planned all sorts of essays, verses, and tales which he never wrote,
+while the others put their pictures on canvas.
+
+"I kept always two books in my pocket," he says, "one to read and one to
+write in. As I walked my mind was busy fitting what I saw with
+appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside I would either read, or a
+pencil and penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the
+features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived
+with words."
+
+If there was little work, to show after a stop at Fontainebleau he had
+many memories of good-fellowship and some of the friends he met there
+were to be the first to greet him when he came to live on this side of
+the water.
+
+While on their "Inland Voyage" the two canoemen had decided that the
+most perfect mode of travel was by canal-boat. What could be more
+delightful? "The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of
+the canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge
+floats by great forests and through great cities with their public
+buildings and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating
+home, 'travelling abed,' it is merely as if he were listening to another
+man's story or turning the leaves of a picture book in which he had no
+concern. He may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the
+banks of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside."
+
+They grew most enthusiastic over the idea and told one another how they
+would furnish their "water villa" with easy chairs, pipes, and tobacco,
+and the bird and the dog should go along too.
+
+By the time Fontainebleau was reached they had planned trips through all
+the canals of Europe. The idea took the artists' fancy also, and a group
+of them actually purchased a canal-boat called _The Eleven Thousand
+Virgins of Cologne_. Furnishing a water villa, however, was more
+expensive than they had foreseen, and she came to a sad end. "'The
+Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne' rotted in the stream where she was
+beautified ... she was never harnessed to the patient track-horse. And
+when at length she was sold, by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there
+was sold along with her the _Arethusa_ and the _Cigarette_ ... now these
+historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and alien names."
+
+In 1873 Stevenson planned to try for admission to the English bar
+instead of the Scottish and went to London to take the examination. But
+his health, which had been rather poor, became worse, and on reaching
+London the doctor ordered him to Mentone in the south of France, where
+he had been before as a boy.
+
+There he spent his days principally lying on his back in the sun reading
+and playing with a little Russian girl with whom he struck up a great
+friendship. His letters to his mother were full of her sayings and
+doings. He was too ill to write much, although one essay, "Ordered
+South," was the outcome of this trip, the only piece of writing in which
+he ever posed as an invalid or talked of his ill health.
+
+At the end of two months he improved enough to return to Edinburgh, but
+gave up the idea of the English bar. His illness and absence seemed to
+have smoothed out some of the difficulties at home, and after he
+returned things went happier in every way.
+
+On July 14, 1875, he passed his final law examinations, and was admitted
+to the Scottish bar. He was now entitled to wear a wig and gown, place
+a brass plate with his name upon the door of 17 Heriot Row, and "have
+the fourth or fifth share of the services of a clerk" whom it is said he
+didn't even know by sight. For a few months he made some sort of a
+pretense at practising, but it amounted to very little. Gradually he
+ceased paying daily visits to the Parliament House to wait for a case,
+but settled himself instead in the room on the top floor at home and
+began to write, seriously this time--it was to be his life-work from now
+on--and the law was forgotten.
+
+His first essays were published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ and _The
+Portfolio_ under the initials R.L.S., which signature in time grew so
+familiar to his friends and to those who admired his writings it became
+a second name for him, and as R.L.S. he is often referred to.
+
+He was free now to roam as he chose and spent much time in Paris with
+Bob. The life there in the artists' quarter suited him as well as it
+had at Fontainebleau. There, among other American artists, he was
+associated with Mr. Will Low, a painter, whom he saw much of when he
+came to New York.
+
+One September he took a walking trip in the Cévenne Mountains with no
+other companion than a little gray donkey, Modestine, who carried his
+pack and tried his patience by turns with her pace, which was "as much
+slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run," as he tells in the
+chronicle of the trip.
+
+A visit at Grez in 1876 was to mark a point in his life. Heretofore the
+artists' colony had been composed only of men. This year there were
+three new arrivals, Americans, a Mrs. Osbourne and her young son and
+daughter. Their home in California had been broken up and the mother had
+come to Grez to paint for the summer.
+
+Those who had been there for a number of years, R.L.S. among them,
+looked on the newcomers as intruders and did not hesitate to say so
+among themselves. Before the summer was over, however, they were
+obliged to confess that the newcomers had added to the charms of Grez,
+and Louis found in Mrs. Osbourne another companion to add to his rapidly
+growing list.
+
+When the artists scattered in the autumn and he returned to Edinburgh
+and Mrs. Osbourne to California, he carried with him the hope that some
+time in the future they should be married.
+
+For the next three years he worked hard. He published numerous essays in
+the _Cornhill Magazine_ and his first short stories, "A Lodging for the
+Night," "Will O' the Mill," and the "New Arabian Nights." These were
+followed by his first books of travel, "An Inland Voyage," giving a
+faithful account of the adventures of the _Arethusa_ and the
+_Cigarette_, and "Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes."
+
+When the latter was published, Mr. Walter Crane made an illustration for
+it showing R.L.S. under a tree in the foreground in his sleeping-bag,
+smoking, while Modestine contentedly crops grass by his side. Above him
+winds the path he is to take on his journey, encouraging Modestine with
+her burden to a livelier pace with his goad; receiving the blessing of
+the good monks at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Snows; stopping for a
+bite and sup at a wayside tavern; conversing with a fellow traveller by
+the way; and finally disappearing with the sunset over the brow of the
+hill.
+
+Some time previous to all this he had written in a letter: "Leslie
+Stephen, who was down here to lecture, called on me, and took me up to
+see a poor fellow, a poet who writes for him, and who has been eighteen
+months in our Infirmary, and may be for all I know eighteen months more.
+Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in
+his bed with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as
+if he had been in a king's palace of blue air."
+
+This was William Ernest Henley, and his brave determination to live and
+work, though he knew he must ever remain in a maimed condition, roused
+Stevenson's sincere admiration. With his usual impetuous generosity, he
+brought him books and other comforts to make his prolonged stay in the
+infirmary less wearisome and a warm friendship sprang up between them.
+
+As Henley grew stronger they planned to work together and write plays.
+Stevenson had done nothing of the kind since he was nineteen. Now they
+chose to use the same plot that he had experimented with at that time.
+It was the story of the notorious Deacon Brodie of Edinburgh, which both
+considered contained good material for a play.
+
+"A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in good society,
+crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who could sing a song
+with taste. Many a citizen was proud to welcome the Deacon to supper,
+and dismiss him with regret ... who would have been vastly disconcerted
+had he known how soon, and in what guise his visitor returned. Many
+stories are told of this redoubtable Edinburgh burgher.... A friend of
+Brodie's ... told him of a projected visit to the country, and
+afterwards detained by some affairs, put it off and stayed the night in
+town. The good man had lain some time awake; it was far on in the small
+hours by the Tron bell; when suddenly there came a crack, a jar, a faint
+light. Softly he clambered out of bed and up to a false window which
+looked upon another room, and there, by the glimmer of a thieves'
+lantern, was his good friend the Deacon in a mask."
+
+At length after a certain robbery in one of the government offices the
+Deacon was suspected. He escaped to Holland, but was arrested in
+Amsterdam as he was about to start for America. He was brought back to
+Edinburgh, was tried and convicted and hanged on the second of October,
+1788, at the west end of the Tolbooth, which was the famous old
+Edinburgh prison known as the Heart of Midlothian.
+
+[Illustration: Edinburgh Castle]
+
+This story of Brodie had always interested Stevenson since he had heard
+it as a child, and a cabinet made by the clever Deacon himself formed
+part of the furniture of his nursery.
+
+"Deacon Brodie" and other plays were finished and produced, but never
+proved successful. Indeed, the money came in but slowly from any of his
+writings and, aside from the critics, it was many a long day before he
+was appreciated by the people of his own city and country. They refused
+to believe that "that daft laddie Stevenson," who had so often shocked
+them by his eccentric ways and scorn of conventions, could do anything
+worth while. So by far his happiest times were spent out of Scotland,
+principally in London, where a membership in the Savile Club added to
+his enjoyment. Here he met several interesting men, among them Edmund
+William Gosse and Sidney Colvin, both writers and literary critics, with
+whom he became very intimate.
+
+"My experience of Stevenson," writes Mr. Gosse, "during these first
+years was confined to London upon which he would make sudden piratical
+descents, staying a few days or weeks and melting into thin air again.
+He was much at my house, and it must be told that my wife and I, as
+young married people, had possessed ourselves of a house too large for
+our slender means immediately to furnish. The one person who thoroughly
+approved of our great bare absurd drawing room was Louis, who very
+earnestly dealt with us on the immorality of chairs and tables, and
+desired us to sit always, as he delighted to sit, upon hassocks on the
+floor. Nevertheless, as armchairs and settees straggled into existence,
+he handsomely consented to use them, although never in the usual way,
+but with his legs thrown sidewise over the arms of them, or the head of
+a sofa treated as a perch. In particular, a certain shelf with cupboards
+below, attached to a bookcase, is worn with the person of Stevenson, who
+would spend half an evening, while passionately discussing some question
+... leaping sidewise in a seated posture to the length of this shelf and
+back again.
+
+"... These were the days when he most frequented the Savile Club, and
+the lightest and most vivacious part of him there came to the surface.
+He might spend the morning in work or business, and would then come to
+the club for luncheon. If he were so fortunate as to find a congenial
+companion disengaged, or to induce them to throw over their engagements,
+he would lead him off to the smoking-room, and there spend an afternoon
+in the highest spirits and the most brilliant and audacious talk.
+
+"He was simply bubbling with quips and jests. I am anxious that his
+laughter-loving mood should not be forgotten, because later on it was
+partly, but I think never wholly quenched, by ill health, responsibility
+and advance of years.
+
+"His private thoughts and prospects must often have been of the
+gloomiest, but he seems to have borne his unhappiness with a courage as
+high as he ever afterwards displayed."
+
+Sidney Colvin he met some time previous while visiting relatives in
+England, and their friendship was renewed when they met again in
+London; a friendship which lasted throughout their lives and which even
+the distance of two seas failed to obliterate. They kept up a lively
+correspondence and Mr. Colvin aided him with the publication of his
+writings while he was absent from his own country. After his death,
+according to Stevenson's wishes, Mr. Colvin edited a large collection of
+his letters and in the notes which he added paid his friend many
+splendid tributes which show him to be a fair critic as well as an
+ardent admirer. "He had only to speak," he says, "in order to be
+recognized in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman, and
+within the first five minutes for a master spirit and man of genius."
+
+Louis's long absences from home often troubled his mother and caused her
+to complain when writing. In one answer to her about this time he said:
+
+"You must not be vexed at my absences, you must understand I shall be a
+nomad, more or less, until my days be done. You don't know how much I
+used to long for it in the old days; how I used to go and look at the
+trains leaving, and wish to go with them. And now, you know, that I have
+a little more that is solid under my feet, you must take my nomadic
+habit as a part of me. Just wait till I am in swing and you will see
+that I shall pass more of my life with you than elsewhere; only take me
+as I am and give me time. I _must_ be a bit of a vagabond."
+
+For all so little of his writing was ever done in his own country,
+nevertheless he turned to Scotland again and again for the setting of
+his stories and the subject of his essays. Although he often spoke
+harshly of Edinburgh when at home, he paid her many loving tributes in
+writing of her in a foreign land: "The quaint grey-castled city where
+the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers
+fly and beat.... I do not even know if I desire to live there, but let
+me hear in some far land a kindred voice sing out 'Oh, why left I my
+hame?' and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and
+no society of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence from my own
+country. And although I think I would rather die elsewhere, yet in my
+heart of hearts I long to be buried among good Scotch clods. I will say
+it fairly, it grows on me with every year; there are no stars so lovely
+as the Edinburgh street lamps. When I forget thee, Auld Reekie, may my
+right hand forget its cunning."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AMATEUR EMIGRANT
+
+ "Hope went before them
+  And the world was wide."
+
+
+In the summer of 1879 R.L.S. was once more seized with the desire to
+roam and to roam farther than ever before. California had been beckoning
+to him for some time, and in August he suddenly made up his mind, and
+with scarcely a word of farewell to his family and friends he embarked
+on the steamship _Devonia_, bound for New York.
+
+Partly for the sake of economy, for he determined to pay his own way on
+this venture, and partly because he was anxious to experience emigrant
+life, he engaged passage in the second cabin, which in those days
+differed very little from the steerage. The main advantages were a
+trifle better food and a cabin to himself with a table where he could
+write.
+
+In his usual way he soon made acquaintance with his fellow passengers
+and did them many a friendly turn. They took him for one of themselves
+and showed little curiosity as to where he came from, who he was, or
+where he was going. He says: "The sailors called me 'mate,' the officers
+addressed me as 'my man,' my comrades accepted me without hesitation for
+a person of their own character and experience. One, a mason himself,
+believed I was a mason, several, among these at least one of the seamen,
+judged me to be a petty officer in the American navy; and I was so often
+set down for a practical engineer that at last I had not the heart to
+deny it."
+
+The emigrants were from many countries, though the majority were Scotch
+and Irish bound for the new world with the hope of meeting with better
+fortune than they had had in the old, and they whiled away the days at
+sea in their several ways, making the best of their discomforts and
+cheering one another when they grew lonely or homesick for those they
+had left behind.
+
+When the weather was good their spirits rose and there were many rounds
+of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered together like bees
+under the lee of the deck-house, and in all of these Stevenson joined
+heartily.
+
+"We were indeed a musical ship's company," he says, "and cheered our way
+into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations,
+good, bad or indifferent--Scottish, English, Irish, Russian or
+Norse--the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a
+recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scotch accent, varied
+the proceedings; and once we sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight
+men of us together, to the music of the violin. The performers were
+humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but
+as soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted themselves
+like so many mutes at a funeral. I have never seen decorum pushed so
+far; and as this was not expected, the quadrille was soon whistled off,
+and the dancers departed.
+
+"But the impulse to sing was strong, and triumphed over modesty and even
+the inclemencies of the sea and sky. On one rough Saturday night, we got
+together by the main deck-house, in a place sheltered from the wind and
+rain. Some clinging to the ladder which led to the hurricane-deck and
+the rest knitting arms or taking hands, we made a ring to support the
+women in the violent lurching of the ship, and when we were thus
+disposed, sang to our hearts' content.
+
+"There was a single chess-board and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as
+many as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. There were
+feats of dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence and a regular daily
+competition to guess the vessel's progress; at twelve o'clock when the
+result was published in the wheel house, came to be a moment of
+considerable interest.... We had beside, romps in plenty. Puss in the
+Corner, which we rebaptized, in more manly style, Devil and Four
+Corners, was my favorite game; but there were many who preferred
+another, the humor of which was to box a person's ears until he found
+out who cuffed him."
+
+The voyage, which lasted ten days, was uneventful except for some rough
+weather when Stevenson found his cabin most stuffy and uncomfortable. He
+was not really ill, however, and spent much of the time finishing a tale
+called "The Story of a Lie," while his table played "Bob Jerry with the
+ink bottle." On his arrival in New York the story was sent back to
+London with the following letter to Sidney Colvin:
+
+
+"On Board S.S. Devonia an hour or two out of New York, Aug., 1879.
+
+"MY DEAR COLVIN:
+
+"I have finished my story. The handwriting is not good because of the
+ship's misconduct; thirty-one pages in ten days at sea is not bad. I am
+not very well; bad food, bad air and hard work have brought me down.
+But the spirits keep good. The voyage has been most interesting and will
+make, if not a series of Pall Mall articles, at least the first part of
+a new book. The last weight on me has been trying to keep notes for this
+purpose. Indeed I have worked like a horse and am tired as a donkey. If
+I should have to push on far by rail, I shall bring nothing but my fine
+bones to port.
+
+"Goodbye to you all. I suppose it is now late afternoon with you all
+across the seas. What shall I find over here? I dare not wonder.--Ever
+yours R.L.S."
+
+
+As California was the goal he aimed for, in spite of his fatigue after
+ten days of poor living and the sea, he determined to push on
+immediately in an emigrant train bound for the Pacific coast.
+
+On reaching port he and a man named Jones, with whom he had had more in
+common than with any of his other fellow passengers, landed together.
+
+"Jones and I issued into West Street, sitting on some straw in the
+bottom of an open baggage wagon. It rained miraculously, and from that
+moment till on the following night I left New York, there was scarce a
+lull, and no cessation of the downpour....
+
+"It took but a few moments, though it cost a good deal of money, to be
+rattled along West Street to our destination: Reunion House, No. 10 West
+Street, 'kept by one Mitchell.'
+
+"Here I was at last in America and was soon out upon the New York
+streets, spying for things foreign....
+
+"The following day I had a thousand and one things to do; only the day
+to do them in and a journey across the continent before me in the
+evening.... It rained with potent fury; every now and then I had to get
+under cover for a while in order, so to speak, to give my mackintosh a
+rest; for under this continued drenching it began to grow damp on the
+inside. I went to banks, post-offices, railway offices, restaurants,
+publishers, book sellers and money changers.
+
+"I was so wet when I got back to Mitchell's toward evening, that I had
+simply to divest myself of my shoes, socks and trousers, and leave them
+behind for the benefit of New York City. No fire could have dried them
+ere I had to start; and to pack them in their present condition was to
+spread ruin among my other possessions. With a heavy heart I said
+farewell to them as they lay a pulp in the middle of a pool upon the
+floor of Mitchell's kitchen. I wonder if they are dry by now."
+
+That night he joined a party of emigrants bound for the West, the weight
+of his baggage much increased by the result of his day's
+purchases--Bancroft's "History of the United States" in six fat volumes.
+So in less than twenty-four hours after landing on one coast he was on
+his way to the other.
+
+If at times he had been uncomfortable on the steamer he was ten times
+more so on the train. It is hard to realize in these days of easy
+travelling what the discomforts of riding in the emigrant trains were;
+crowded together in badly lighted, badly ventilated cars, with stiff
+wooden benches on either side, which were most uncomfortable to sit on
+and next to impossible to lie down upon. Meals were taken as best they
+might when they stopped at way stations while some bought milk and eggs
+and made a shift to cook themselves a meal or brew a cup of tea on the
+stove at the end of the car.
+
+Over a week of this sort of slow travelling through the heat of the
+plains was enough to tax the strength and courage of the most robust
+man, let alone one in as delicate health as Stevenson at that time, and
+it is a wonder he ever lived through it. Indeed, he was ill but kept
+cheerful in spite of all, and was interested in the country and the
+sights along the way. His own discomforts seemed to dwindle when he
+contrasted them with those the pioneers endured travelling that same
+direction twenty years before; crawling along in ox-carts with their
+cattle and family possessions; suffering hunger, thirst, and infinite
+weariness, and living in daily terror of attack from the Indians.
+
+He made note of all he saw and the doings of his fellow emigrants, to be
+used later on. Letters to Henley and Colvin en route are interesting.
+
+
+"In the Emigrant Train from New York to San Francisco, Aug., 1879.
+
+DEAR COLVIN,--I am in the cars between Pittsburg and Chicago, just now
+bowling through Ohio. I am taking charge of a kid, whose mother is
+asleep, with one eye while I write you this with the other. I reached
+N.Y. Sunday night, and by five o'clock Monday was underway for the
+West.--It is now about ten on Wednesday morning, so I have already been
+forty hours in the cars. It is impossible to lie down in them, which
+must end by being very wearying....
+
+"No man is any use until he has dared everything; I feel just now as if
+I had, and so might become a man. 'If ye have faith like a grain of
+mustard seed.' That is so true! Just now I have faith as big as a cigar
+case, I will not say die, and I do not fear man nor fortune.--R.L.S."
+
+
+"Crossing Nebraska, Saturday, Aug. 23, 1879.
+
+"My Dear Henley,--I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party
+from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all
+hands.... When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight
+travel together, the kine first, the man after, the whole plain is heard
+singing with cicadae. This is a pause, as you may see from the writing.
+What happened to the old pedestrian emigrants; what was the tedium
+suffered by the Indians and trappers of our youth, the imagination
+trembles to conceive. This is now Saturday, 23rd, and I have been
+steadily travelling since I parted from you at St. Pancras. It is a
+strange vicissitude from the Savile Club to this; I sleep with a man
+from Pennsylvania who has been in the Navy Yard, and mess with him and
+the Missouri bird already alluded to. We have a tin wash-bowl among
+four, I wear nothing but a shirt and a pair of trousers and never button
+my shirt. When I land for a meal, I pass my coat and feel dressed. This
+life is to last until Friday, Saturday or Sunday next. It is a strange
+affair to be an emigrant, as I hope you shall see in a future work. I
+wonder if this will be legible; my present station on the wagon roof,
+though airy, compared to the cars, is both dirty and insecure. I can see
+the track straight before and straight behind me to either horizon....
+
+"Our journey is through ghostly deserts, sage brush and alkali, and
+rocks without form or color, a sad corner of the world. I confess I am
+not jolly, but mighty calm, in my distresses. My illness is a subject of
+great mirth to some of my fellow travellers, and I smile rather sickly
+at their jests.
+
+"We are going along Bitter Creek just now, a place infamous in the
+history of emigration, a place I shall remember myself among the
+blackest.--R.L.S."
+
+
+When California was finally reached he decided to rest and recover
+strength by camping out for a few days in the Coast Range Mountains
+beyond Monterey, but the anxiety and strain of the long journey had been
+greater than he realized, and he broke down and became very ill. For two
+nights he lay out under the trees in a kind of stupor and at length was
+rescued by two frontiersmen in charge of a goat-ranch, who took him to
+their cabin and cared for him until he partly recovered.
+
+"Here is another curious start in my life," he wrote to Sidney Colvin.
+"I am living at an Angora goat-ranch, in the Coast Line Mountains,
+eighteen miles from Monterey. I was camping out, but got so sick that
+the two rancheros took me in and tended me. One is an old bear hunter,
+seventy-two years old, and a captain from the Mexican War; the other a
+pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when
+California was taken by the States. They are both true frontiersmen, and
+most kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the bear hunter, is my physician,
+and I obey him like an oracle....
+
+"I am now lying in an upper chamber, with the clinking of goat bells in
+my ears, which proves to me that the goats are come home and it will
+soon be time to eat. The old bear hunter is doubtless now infusing tea;
+and Tom the Indian will come in with his gun in a few moments....
+
+"The business of my life stands pretty nigh still. I work at my notes of
+the voyage. It will not be very like a book of mine; but perhaps none
+the less successful for that. I will not deny that I feel lonely
+to-day.... I have not yet had a word from England, partly, I suppose,
+because I have not yet written for my letters to New York; do not blame
+me for this neglect, if you knew all I have been through, you would
+wonder I had done as much as I have. I teach the ranch children reading
+in the morning, for the mother is from home sick.
+
+"Ever your affectionate friend.
+
+"R.L.S."
+
+
+As soon as Stevenson was well enough he returned to Monterey and fell to
+working upon several short stories and the notes of his voyage, which he
+brought together and published later under the titles "The Amateur
+Emigrant" and "Across the Plains."
+
+Monterey in those days was a small Mexican town; "a place of two or
+three streets economically paved with sea-sand, and two or three lanes,
+which were the water courses in the rainy season.... The houses were,
+for the most part, built of unbaked adobe brick....
+
+"There was no activity but in and around the saloons, where the people
+sat almost all day playing cards. The smallest excursion was made on
+horseback. You would scarcely ever see the main street without a horse
+or two tied to posts, and making a fine figure with their Mexican
+housings. In a place so exclusively Mexican as Monterey, you saw not
+only Mexican saddles, but true Vaquero riding--men always at a hand
+gallop, up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest corners, urging
+their horses with cries and gesticulations and cruel rotary spurs,
+checking them dead, with a touch, or wheeling them right about face in a
+square yard. Spanish was the language of the street."
+
+He lodged with a doctor and his wife, and took his meals at the little
+restaurant kept by Jules Simoneau, "a most pleasant old boy," with whom
+he played chess and discussed the universe daily.
+
+About the middle of December he pushed on to San Francisco, and prepared
+to settle down and work for an indefinite time. Though he had known but
+few people in Monterey, nevertheless it was a social little place in
+comparison to a great city like San Francisco, where Stevenson found
+himself indeed a stranger and friendless and learned for the first time
+in his life what it really meant to be lonely.
+
+Funds were running low; so he secured the cheapest possible lodging and
+took his meals at various small restaurants, living at the rate of
+seventy cents a day.
+
+On December 26 he wrote: "For four days I have spoken to no one but my
+landlady or landlord or the restaurant waiters. This is not a gay way to
+pass Christmas, is it?" But some days later, nothing daunted, he added:
+"I lead a pretty happy life, though you might not think it. I have great
+fun trying to be economical, which I find as good a game of play as any
+other. I have no want of occupation and though I rarely see any one to
+speak to, have little time to worry."
+
+To make matters worse, letters containing money went astray and word
+came that some articles submitted to his publishers in England, on which
+he had depended for funds, were not satisfactory, and this forced him to
+reduce his living expenses to forty-five cents a day. The letters from
+home were most unsatisfactory and lacked the kind of news he longed for.
+"Not one soul ever gives me any _news_," he complained to Sidney Colvin,
+"about people or things, everybody writes me sermons; it is good for me,
+but hardly the food necessary for a man who lives all alone on
+forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work
+and many heavy thoughts. If one of you could write me a letter with a
+jest in it, a letter like what is written to real people in the world--I
+am still flesh and blood--I should enjoy it. Simpson did the other day,
+and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine--man alive I want
+gossip."
+
+Day in and day out he worked doggedly, fighting discouragement, with
+little strength or inspiration to write anything very worth while.
+
+To cap all, his landlady's little boy fell ill, and Stevenson, who had a
+great love and sympathy for all children, helped to nurse him, and this
+proved too much in the nervous and exhausted state he was in. The boy
+recovered, but Stevenson fell ill again, and for six weeks hovered
+between life and death.
+
+This seems to have been the turning-point in his ill luck. Toward the
+middle of February, as he slowly began to mend, he was cheered on by
+long letters from home, full of anxiety for his health and advances of
+money from his father, with strict instructions that from now on he was
+no longer to stint and deny himself the bare necessities of life, as he
+had been doing. Later, in April, came a telegram from Thomas Stevenson
+saying that in future Louis was to count on an income of two hundred and
+fifty pounds a year.
+
+Cheered with the prospect of an easier road ahead of him, he struggled
+back to life once more with a strong resolve to work harder and make
+those at home proud of him.
+
+"It was a considerable shock to my pride to break down," he wrote to a
+friend, "but there it's done and can not be helped. Had my health held
+out another month, I should have made a year's income, but breaking
+down when I did, I am surrounded by unfinished works. It is a good thing
+my father was on the spot, or I should have had to work and die."
+
+Early in the spring he and Mrs. Osbourne met again, and on May 19, 1880,
+they were married in San Francisco.
+
+For the rest of his life Stevenson had no cause to complain of
+loneliness, for in his wife he had an "inseparable sharer of all his
+adventures; the most open-hearted of friends to all those who loved him;
+the most shrewd and stimulating critic of his work; and in sickness,
+despite her own precarious health, the most devoted and most efficient
+of nurses."
+
+Immediately after their marriage Stevenson and his wife and stepson--and
+the dog--went to the Coast Range Mountains and, taking possession of an
+old deserted miner's camp, practically lived out-of-doors for the next
+few months, with no neighbors aside from a hunter and his family.
+
+This was healthy, but the life of a squatter has its limitations, and
+their trials and tribulations during these weeks Stevenson told most
+amusingly in "The Silverado Squatters."
+
+Gradually a longing began to come to R.L.S. to see those at home once
+more and have them know his wife. This desire grew so from day to day
+that July found them bidding good-by to California, and on the 7th of
+August they sailed from New York for Liverpool.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SCOTLAND AGAIN
+
+ "Bells upon the city are ringing in the night,
+  High above the gardens are the houses full of light,
+  On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free,
+  And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.
+
+ "We canna break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
+  Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind,
+  Far away from home O, it's still for you and me
+  That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie."
+
+
+On his return to Scotland the spell of his own land fell upon R.L.S. for
+the first time. He realized now how he loved it spite of its bad
+climate, how much there was at home waiting for him. "After all," he
+said, "new countries, sun, music, and all the rest, can never take down
+our gusty, rainy, smoky, grim old city out of the first place it has
+been making for itself in the bottom of my soul."
+
+But he had returned only to be banished. The doctors found his lungs
+too weak to risk Edinburgh winters and advised him to try the Alps.
+
+Accordingly a cottage was rented in Davos Platz, a health resort. There
+and at similar places near by they spent the next few winters with
+visits to England and France between. Switzerland never suited
+Stevenson. He disliked living among invalids, and with his love for
+exploring the nooks and corners of any spot he was in he felt like a
+prisoner when he found himself shut in a valley among continual snow
+with few walks possible for him to take. "The mountains are about me
+like a trap," he complained. "You can not foot it up a hillside and
+behold the sea on a great plain, but live in holes and corners and can
+change only one for the other."
+
+Tobogganing was the only sport of Davos Platz he really enjoyed, and he
+pursued that to his heart's content. "Perhaps the true way to toboggan
+is alone and at night," he said. "First comes the tedious climb
+dragging your instrument behind you. Next a long breathing space, alone
+with the snow and pine woods, cold, silent and solemn to the heart. Then
+you push off; the toboggan fetches away, she begins to feel the hill, to
+glide, to swim, to gallop. In a breath you are out from under the
+pine-trees and the whole heaven full of stars reels and flashes
+overhead."
+
+He accomplished little work at this time. Sometimes for days he would be
+unable to write at all. But the little boy who had once told his mother,
+"I have been trying to make myself happy," was the same man now who
+could say: "I was never bored in my life." When unable to do anything
+else he would build houses of cards or lie in bed and model little
+figures in clay. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind distracted
+from the stories that crowded his brain and he had not strength to put
+on paper. His one horror, the fear that urged him on to work feverishly
+when he was suffering almost beyond endurance, was the thought that his
+illness might one day make him a helpless invalid.
+
+The splendid part to think of is that no hint of his dark days and pains
+crept into his writings or saddened those who came to see him. Complaint
+he kept to himself, prayed that he might "continue to be eager to be
+happy," lived with the best that was in him from day to day, and the
+words that went forth from his sick-room have cheered and encouraged
+thousands.
+
+When asked why he wrote so many stories of pirates and adventurers with
+few women to soften them he replied: "I suppose it's the contrast; I
+have always admired great strength, even in a pirate. Courage has
+interested me more than anything else."
+
+He and his stepson had grown to be great chums. At Silverado Lloyd had
+been seized with a desire to write stories and had set up a toy
+printing-press which turned off several tales. At Davos Platz they both
+tried their hand at illustrating these stories with pictures cut on
+wood-blocks and gayly colored. Lloyd's room was quite a gallery of these
+artistic attempts. But their favorite diversion was to play at a war
+game with lead soldiers. In after-years Lloyd wrote his recollections of
+the days they spent together enjoying this fun and he says: "The war
+game was constantly improved and elaborated, until from a few hours, a
+war took weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic
+monopolized half our thoughts. This attic was a most chilly and dismal
+spot, reached by a crazy ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted
+window; so low at the eaves and so dark that we could seldom stand
+upright, nor see without a candle. Upon the attic floor a map was
+roughly drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers,
+towns, bridges, and roads of two classes. Here we would play by the
+hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an intentness,
+zest, and excitement that I shall never forget.
+
+"The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed by measured
+evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in
+front and massed support behind, in the most approved military fashion
+of to-day."
+
+Neither of them ever grew too old for this sport. Year after year they
+went back to the game. Even when they went to Samoa they laid out a
+campaign room with maps chalked on the floor.
+
+In the spring of 1885 Thomas Stevenson purchased a house at Bournemouth,
+England, near London, as a present for his daughter-in-law.
+
+They named the cottage "Skerryvore," after the famous lighthouse he had
+helped to build in his young days, and it was their home for the next
+three years--busy ones for R.L.S.
+
+[Illustration: Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth]
+
+It was a real joy to have his father and mother and Bob Stevenson with
+them again and his friends in London frequently drop in for a visit.
+
+His health was never worse than during the Bournemouth days. He seldom
+went beyond his own garden-gate but lived, as he says, "like a weevil in
+a biscuit." Yet he never worked harder or accomplished more. He wrote in
+bed and out of bed, sick or well, poems, plays, short stories, and
+verses.
+
+He finished "Treasure Island," the book that gained him his first
+popularity, and wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which made him famous
+at home and abroad.
+
+"Treasure Island" had been started some time previous to please Lloyd,
+who asked him to write a "good story." It all began with a map.
+Stevenson always loved maps, and one day during a picture-making bout he
+had drawn a fine one. "It was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully
+colored," he says. "The shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it
+contained harbors that pleased me like sonnets.... I ticketed my
+performance Treasure Island."
+
+Immediately the island began to take life and swarm with people, all
+sorts of strange scenes began to take place upon it, and as he gazed at
+his map Stevenson discovered the plot for the "good story."
+
+"It is horrid fun," he wrote, "and begins in the Admiral Benbow public
+house on the Devon coast; all about a map and a treasure and a mutiny,
+and a derelict ship ... and a doctor and a sea-cook with one leg with
+the chorus 'yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,' ... No women in the story,
+Lloyd orders."
+
+Parts of the coast at Monterey flashed back to his mind and helped him
+to picture the scenery of his "Treasure Island." "It was just such a
+place as the Monterey sand hills the hero John Hawkins found himself on
+leaving his mutinous shipmates. It was just such a thicket of live oak
+growing low along the sand like brambles, that he crawled and dodged
+when he heard the voices of the pirates near him and saw Long John
+Silver strike down with his crutch one of his mates who had refused to
+join in his plan for murder."
+
+[Illustration: The Treasure Island map]
+
+As the story grew he read each new chapter aloud to the family in the
+evening. He was writing it for one boy, but found he had more in his
+audience. "My father," he says, "not only heard with delight the daily
+chapter, but set himself actively to collaborate. When the time came for
+Billy Bones' chest to be ransacked, he must have passed the better part
+of a day preparing on the back of a legal envelope an inventory of its
+contents, which I exactly followed, and the name of Flint's old ship,
+the Walrus, was given at his particular request."
+
+When the map was redrawn for the book it was embellished with "blowing
+whales and sailing ships; and my father himself brought into service a
+knack he had of various writing, and elaborately _forged_ the signature
+of Captain Flint and the sailing directions of Billy Bones."
+
+These daily readings were rare treats to those at Skerryvore, for
+Stevenson was a most dramatic reader. "When he came to stand in the
+place of Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great
+one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea."
+
+The book was not long in springing into popularity. Not only the boys
+enjoyed it but all sorts of staid and sober men became boys once more
+and sat up long after bedtime to finish the tale. Mr. Gladstone caught a
+glimpse of it at a friend's house and did not rest the next day until he
+had procured a copy for himself, and Andrew Lang said: "This is the kind
+of stuff a fellow wants. I don't know when, except Tom Sawyer and the
+Odyssey, that I ever liked a romance so well."
+
+It was translated into many different languages, even appearing serially
+in certain Greek and Spanish papers.
+
+"Kidnapped" followed; a story founded on the Appan murder. David
+Balfour, the hero, was one of his own ancestors; Alan Breck had actually
+lived, and the Alison who ferried Alan and David over to Torryburn was
+one of Cummie's own people. The Highland country where the scenes were
+laid, he had traversed many times, and the Island of Earraid, where
+David was shipwrecked, was the spot where he had spent some of his
+engineering days.
+
+Stevenson had often said the "brownies" in his dreams gave him ideas for
+his tales. At Skerryvore they came to him with a story that among all
+his others is counted the greatest.
+
+"In the small hours one morning," says his wife, "I was awakened by
+cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare I awakened him.
+He said angrily, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey
+tale.'"
+
+The dream was so vivid that he could not rest until he had written off
+the story, and it so possessed him that the first draft was finished
+within three days. It was called "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde."
+
+This story instantly created much discussion. Articles were written
+about it, sermons were preached on it, and letters poured in from all
+sorts of people with their theories about the strange tale. Six months
+after it was published nearly forty thousand copies were sold in
+England alone; but its greatest success was in America where its
+popularity was immediate and its sale enormous.
+
+One day he was attracted by a book of verses about children by Kate
+Greenaway, and wondered why he could not write some too of the children
+he remembered best of all. Scenes and doings in the days spent at
+Colinton with his swarm of cousins; the games they had played and the
+people they had known all trooped back with other memories of Edinburgh
+days. As he recalled these children, they tripped from his pen until he
+had a delightful collection of verses and determined to bring them
+together in a book.
+
+First he called it "The Penny Whistle," but soon changed the title to "A
+Child's Garden of Verses" and dedicated it, with the following poem, to
+the only one he said who would really understand the verses, the one who
+had done so much to make his childhood days happy:
+
+
+           TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+               FROM HER BOY
+
+ "For the long nights you lay awake
+  And watched for my unworthy sake;
+  For your most comfortable hand
+  That led me through the uneven land;
+  For all the story-books you read;
+  For all the pains you comforted;
+  For all you pitied, all you bore
+  In sad and happy days of yore;--
+  My second Mother, my first wife,
+  The angel of my infant life--
+  From the sick child, now well and old,
+  Take, nurse, the little book you hold!
+
+ "And grant it, Heaven, that all who read,
+  May find as dear a nurse at need,
+  And every child who lists my rhyme,
+  In the bright fireside, nursery clime,
+  May hear it in as kind a voice
+  As made my childish days rejoice."
+
+
+"Of course," he said, speaking of this dedication when he wrote to
+Cummie about the book, "this is only a flourish, like taking off one's
+hat, but still a person who has taken the trouble to write things does
+not dedicate them to anyone without meaning it; and you must try to
+take this dedication in place of a great many things that I might have
+said, and that I ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether
+unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe you."
+
+[Illustration: Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with "An Inland
+Voyage"]
+
+If Thomas Stevenson had been one of the first to doubt his boy's
+literary ability, he was equally quick to acknowledge himself mistaken.
+He was proud of his brilliant son, keenly interested in whatever he was
+working on and, during the days spent together at Skerryvore, gave him
+valuable aid in his writing.
+
+To have this old-time comradeship with his father, to enjoy his sympathy
+and understanding once more was Stevenson's greatest joy at this time; a
+joy which he sorrowfully realized he must soon part with forever as his
+father's health was failing rapidly.
+
+Thomas Stevenson remained at Skerryvore until April, 1887, when he left
+for a short visit to Edinburgh. While there he became suddenly worse and
+died on the 8th of May.
+
+Louis's greatest reason for remaining in England was gone now, and he
+determined to cross the ocean with his family once more.
+
+His mother willingly gave up her home, her family, her friends, and the
+comforts she had always enjoyed to go with him to a new country, on any
+venture he might propose if his health could only be improved thereby.
+
+On August 21, 1887, Louis bade good-by to Scotland for the last time and
+sailed away from London on the steamship _Ludgate Hill_ for New York.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA
+
+  "Tis a good land to fall in with men, and a pleasant land to see."
+
+        --(_Words spoken by Hendrik Hudson when he first brought his
+           ship through the Narrows and saw the Bay of New York_.)
+
+
+Stevenson's second landing in New York was a great contrast to his
+first. The "Amateur Emigrant" had no one to bid him welcome and Godspeed
+but a West Street tavern-keeper, and now when Mr. Will Low, his old
+friend of Fontainebleau days, hastened to the dock to welcome him on the
+_Ludgate Hill_, he found the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" already
+surrounded by reporters.
+
+The trip had done him good in spite of their passage having been an
+unusually rough one, with numerous discomforts. The _Ludgate Hill_ was
+not an up-to-date liner and she carried a very mixed cargo. The very
+fact of her being a tramp ship and that the passengers were free to be
+about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, and enjoy a
+real sea life, delighted Stevenson, and he wrote back to Sidney Colvin:
+
+"I enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our floating
+menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the
+vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack;
+and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the
+port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and
+the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big
+monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms ...
+the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed.
+Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound
+unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our state rooms,
+and you have the voyage of the Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of
+New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh
+water, and yet we lived and we regret her."
+
+After a short visit with friends in Newport they returned to New York
+and settled down for a time in the Hotel St. Stephen, on 11th Street,
+near University Place, to make plans for their winter's trip.
+
+Soon after their arrival "Jekyll and Hyde" was dramatized and produced
+with great success. When it was known that the author of this remarkable
+story was in the city, people flocked from all sides to call on him, and
+fairly wearied him with their attentions, although he liked to see them
+and made many interesting acquaintances at the time.
+
+Washington Square was one of his favorite spots in New York, and he
+spent many hours there watching the children playing about. A day he
+always recalled with special pleasure was the one when he had spent a
+whole forenoon in the Square talking with Mark Twain.
+
+Among those who were anxious to know Stevenson was the American
+sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. He had been delighted with his writings
+and regretted he had not met him in Paris when he and Mr. Low had been
+there together. "If Stevenson ever comes to New York," he said to Mr.
+Low, "I want to meet him," and added that he would consider it a great
+privilege if Stevenson would permit him to make his portrait.
+
+It was with much pleasure, therefore, that Mr. Low brought them
+together, and they took to one another immediately. "I like your
+sculptor. What a splendid straightforward and simple fellow he is," said
+Stevenson; and St. Gaudens's comment after their first meeting was:
+"Astonishingly young, not a bit like an invalid and a bully fellow."
+
+Stevenson readily consented to sit for his portrait, and they spent many
+delightful hours together while the sketches were being made for it.
+
+One day the sculptor brought his eight-year-old son, Homer, with him,
+and years afterward gave the following description of the child's visit:
+
+"On the way I endeavored to impress on the boy the fact that he was
+about to see a man whom he must remember all his life. It was a lovely
+day and as I entered the room Stevenson lay as usual on rather a high
+bed. I presented Homer to him ... but since my son's interest,
+notwithstanding my injunctions, was to say the least far from
+enthusiastic, I sent him out to play.
+
+[Illustration: Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus Saint Gaudens]
+
+"I then asked Stevenson to pose but that was not successful ... all the
+gestures being forced and affected. Therefore I suggested to him that if
+he would try to write, some natural attitude might result. He assented
+and taking a sheet of paper ... he pulled his knees up and began.
+Immediately his attitude was such that I was enabled to create something
+of use and continued drawing while he wrote with an occasional smile.
+Presently I finished and told him there was no necessity for his writing
+any more. He did not reply but proceeded for quite a while. Then he
+folded the paper with deliberation, placed it in an envelope, addressed
+it, and handed it to me. It was to 'Master Homer St. Gaudens.'
+
+"I asked him: 'Do you wish me to give this to the boy?'
+
+"'Yes,'
+
+"'When? Now?'
+
+"'Oh, no, in five or ten years, or when I am dead.'
+
+"I put it in a safe and here it is:
+
+
+"May 27, 1888.
+
+"DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS--Your father has brought you this day to see me
+and tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going to
+do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after,
+to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin
+by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the
+introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded
+ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and
+admirable point in your character. You were also,--I use the past tense
+with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I
+am writing,--a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly
+self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must
+pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may perhaps like to know that
+the lean, flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a
+state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant; harassed with work which
+he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which
+you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter
+than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert
+islands.
+                      "Your father's friend,
+                                 "ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."
+
+
+The portrait was finished in bas-relief and many copies were made of it.
+The most familiar is the one giving only Stevenson's head and
+shoulders, but the splendid big one placed as a memorial to him in St.
+Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh shows him as he must have looked that day
+lying in bed, writing to Homer St. Gaudens.
+
+Another man in New York whom Stevenson had admired for years and longed
+to meet was General Sherman. The war was long past, and he was then an
+old gentleman living very quietly. One day St. Gaudens took Stevenson to
+call on him, and he was asked afterward if he was at all disappointed in
+his hero.
+
+"Disappointed," he exclaimed. "It was simply magnificent to stand in the
+presence of one who has done what he has, and then to find him so genial
+and human. It was the next thing to seeing Wellington, and I dare say
+the Iron Duke would not have been half so human."
+
+The anticipation of a train trip across the continent was so distasteful
+that a proposed visit to Colorado was given up, and they decided to try
+the climate of the Adirondacks for the winter instead.
+
+They chose Saranac, not far from the Canadian border, and rented a
+cottage there.
+
+The climate was as unpleasant as possible. It rained, snowed, sleeted,
+and froze continually. The cold at times was arctic, the thermometer
+dropping thirty degrees below zero in January. "Venison was crunching
+with ice after being an hour in the oven, and a large lump of ice was
+still unmelted in a pot where water was steaming all around it."
+
+Their cottage was dubbed "Hunter's Home." It was far from the railroad,
+few luxuries were to be had, and they lived a simple life in earnest.
+
+Of course, they had a dog; no "hunter's home" would be complete without
+one, but Louis scouted the idea of adding things as unfitting as plush
+table-covers and upholstered footstools. The table went bare, and he
+fashioned a footstool for his mother out of a log, in true backwoods
+fashion.
+
+His wife and mother found the cold hard to bear, but he stood it
+remarkably well and benefited by it. Saranac reminded him of Scotland,
+he said, without the smell of peats and the heather.
+
+Dressed in a buffalo coat, astrakhan cap, and Indian boots, he and Lloyd
+walked, skated, or went sleighing every day.
+
+His pen was kept busy also. A new novel, "The Master of Ballantrae," was
+started, and he contributed a series of articles to _Scribner's
+Magazine_. For these he was paid a regular sum offered by the publishers
+and agreed upon in advance--a new experience. It made him feel "awfu'
+grand," he told a Scotch friend.
+
+A venture he had been longing to make since a boy was a cruise among the
+islands of the South Seas. While enduring the bitter cold of Saranac
+such hazy ideas as he had had about such a trip began to form themselves
+into a definite scheme. He was anxious for a long voyage; perhaps the
+warm sea air might cure him after all else had failed.
+
+So night after night he and Lloyd eagerly pored over books and maps,
+and the family discussed plans for such an expedition.
+
+When spring came Mrs. Stevenson started for San Francisco to secure, if
+possible, a yacht in which they might undertake such a cruise. If all
+went well Louis and his mother and Lloyd would follow.
+
+While they waited for results they spent the time at Manasquan, on the
+New Jersey coast. There Stevenson and his son enjoyed the sailing, and
+their New York friends came often to see them.
+
+Mr. Low tells of the day at Manasquan when word was received from Mrs.
+Stevenson that she had found a schooner-yacht satisfactory for the
+voyage.
+
+An answer must be sent at once. Her husband telegraphed that they would
+come, but it was not without misgivings that he made this final
+decision. There was much at stake in an uncertain venture of the kind.
+It meant a sacrifice of comfort for his wife and mother, big expense,
+and perhaps no better health in the end.
+
+However, it seemed worth the risk, and having decided to go he began to
+look forward to the trip with boyish delight. "It will be horrid fun,"
+he said, "to be an invalid gentleman on board a yacht, to walk around
+with a spy-glass under your arm, to make landings and trade beads and
+chromos for cocoanuts, and to have the natives swim out to meet you."
+
+He and Lloyd spent hours laying their course and making out lists of
+stores with which to furnish the schooner, regardless of the doubt
+expressed by their friends as to the capacity of the boat. "They calmly
+proceeded with their interminable lists and scorned the criticism of a
+mere land-lubber. All conversation that was not of a nautical character
+failed to hold their interest."
+
+Cheered with strong hopes for Louis's future, the family departed for
+San Francisco on the 28th of May, 1888. Their one regret was the good
+friends they were leaving behind. This particularly affected Louis, but
+he tried to hide his feelings by making all sorts of lively and
+impossible proposals for their joining him later on.
+
+His parting words to Mr. Low were: "There's England over there--and I've
+left it--perhaps I may never go back--and there on the other side of
+this big continent there's another sea rolling in. I loved the Pacific
+in the days when I was at Monterey, and perhaps now it will love me a
+little. I am going to meet it; ever since I was a boy the South Seas
+have laid a spell upon me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+ "Since long ago, a child at home,
+  I read and longed to rise and roam,
+  Where'er I went, what'er I willed,
+  One promised land my fancy filled.
+  Hence the long road my home I made;
+  Tossed much in ships; have often laid
+  Below the uncurtained sky my head,
+  Rain-deluged and wind buffeted;
+  And many a thousand miles I crossed,
+  And corners turned--love's labor lost,
+  Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
+  I came, not hoping, and like one
+  Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
+  And hailed my promised land with cries."
+
+
+Once, while Louis was a discontented student at the University of
+Edinburgh, the premier of New Zealand, Mr. Seed, spent an evening with
+his father and talked about the South Sea Islands until the boy said he
+was "sick with desire to go there."
+
+From that time on a visit to that out-of-the-way corner of the earth was
+a cherished dream, and he read everything he could lay hands on that
+told about it.
+
+While in California, the first time, Mr. Virgil Williams, an artist,
+aroused his interest still more by the accounts of his own trip in the
+South Seas.
+
+Now his opportunity to see them had actually come. He already knew much
+of the kind of places and people they were going among.
+
+Three thousand miles across the open sea lay the Marquesas Islands, the
+first group they hoped to visit, and it was for that port their
+schooner, the _Casco_, turned her head when she was towed out of the
+Golden Gate at dawn on the 28th of June.
+
+Besides the family and a servant, Valentine Roch, who had been with them
+since Bournemouth days, the party consisted of the skipper, Captain
+Otis, who was well acquainted with the Pacific, a crew of four
+deck-hands, and a Japanese cook.
+
+The _Casco_ was a fore-and-aft schooner, ninety-five feet in length, of
+seventy tons' burden. "She had most graceful lines and with her lofty
+masts, white sails and decks, and glittering brass work, was a lovely
+craft to the eye as she sat upon the water."
+
+"I must try to describe the vessel that is to be our home for so long,"
+Mrs. Stevenson, senior, wrote to her sister at Colinton. "From the deck
+you step down into the cockpit, which is our open air drawing room. It
+has seats all around, nicely cushioned, and we sit or lie there most of
+the day. The compass is there, and the wheel, so the man at the wheel
+always keeps us company.... At the bottom of the stairs on the right
+hand side is the captain's room. Straight ahead is the main--or
+after--cabin, a nice bright place with a skylight and four portholes.
+There are four sofas that can be turned into beds if need be, and there
+are lockers under them in which our clothes are stored away. Above and
+behind each sofa is a berth concealed by white lace curtains on brass
+rods, and in these berths we three women are laid away as on shelves
+each night to sleep.
+
+"Opposite the entrance is a mirror let into the wall, with two small
+shelves under it. On each side of this is a door. The one to the right
+leads ... to Lloyd's cabin, and beyond that again is the forward cabin,
+or dining room. The door to the left opens into ... Louis'
+sleeping-room. It is very roomy with both a bed and a sofa in it, so
+that he will be very comfortable....
+
+"The dining room has a long table and chairs. Between the doors a very
+ugly picture of fruit and cake. Louis would fain cover it up if we could
+spare a flag with which to do it. The doors at the further end lead to
+the pantry and galley and beyond these are the men's quarters."
+
+No expense had been spared in building the _Casco_ to make her
+comfortable. She was intended, however, for cruising in the California
+waters and was hardly suited to the rough handling she received during
+the squally weather of the next few months. Fortunately she stood the
+test well and her passengers suffered few discomforts.
+
+Once under way and settled for living, the trip proved quite uneventful.
+The long days were spent on deck reading or working, and Stevenson began
+to gather material for a book on the South Seas. The ship's life suited
+him admirably; every strange fish and new star interested him, and he
+grew stronger hourly in the warm air.
+
+"Since the fifth day," he wrote, "we were left behind by a full-rigged
+English ship ... bound round the Horn, we have not spied a sail, nor a
+land bird, nor a shred of sea-weed. In impudent isolation, the toy
+schooner has plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all
+track of commerce, far from any hand of help; now to the sound of
+slatting sails and stamping sheet blocks, staggering in the turmoil of
+that business falsely called a calm, now, in the assault of squalls
+burying her lee-rail in the sea.... Flying fish, a skimming silver rain
+on the blue sea; a turtle fast asleep in the early morning sunshine;
+the Southern Cross hung thwart the forerigging like the frame of a
+wrecked kite--the pole star and the familiar plough dropping ever lower
+in the wake; these build up thus far the history of our voyage. It is
+singular to come so far and see so infinitely little."
+
+The squalls that came very quickly, frequently broke the monotony of the
+trip. One moment the _Casco_ would be sailing along easily and the "next
+moment, the inhabitants of the cabin were piled one upon another, the
+sea was pouring into the cockpit and spouting in fountains through
+forgotten deadlights, and the steersman stood spinning the wheel for his
+life in a halo of tropical rain."
+
+After twenty-two days at sea they sighted their first island, Nukahiva,
+one of the Marquesan group, and were all on deck before dawn anxiously
+watching for it. They not only looked forward eagerly to the sight of
+land again after so many days on the open ocean, but it was indeed an
+adventure to come to a country totally strange to all of them, where
+few white people had been before.
+
+"Not one soul aboard the Casco had set foot upon the Islands," says
+Stevenson, "or knew except by accident one word of any of the island
+tongues; and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure
+as thrilled the bosom of the discoverers that we drew near these
+problematic shores.
+
+"Before yet the anchor plunged a canoe was already paddling from the
+hamlet. It contained two men: one white, one brown and tattooed across
+the face with bands of blue, both immaculate with white European
+clothes.... Canoe followed canoe till the ship swarmed with stalwart,
+six foot men in every stage of undress ... the more considerable
+tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns ... all talking and we
+could not understand one word; all trying to trade with us who had no
+thought of trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably
+absurd."
+
+All this charmed and delighted Stevenson, who had dreamed many times of
+witnessing just such a scene. He wrote to Cummie that he was living all
+over again many of the stories she had read to him and found them coming
+true about himself.
+
+For six weeks they cruised about among these islands, frequently
+dropping anchor and going ashore for several days. When the natives were
+convinced that they had neither come to trade or to make trouble, but
+were simply interested in them and their country, they made the visitors
+most welcome and showered presents of fruit, mats, baskets, and fans
+upon them.
+
+All were eager to visit the schooner, which they called _Pahi Mani_,
+meaning the shining or the silver ship. The chiefs tried to measure its
+dimensions with their arms. The liveliest curiosity was shown about
+everything; the red velvet cushions, the looking-glasses, and the
+typewriter pleased particularly. A photograph of Queen Victoria hung in
+the fore-cabin and was always described to the island callers as _Vahine
+Haka-iki Beritano_, which meant literally, woman-great-chief Britain. It
+was a surprise to find how much many of them already knew about her.
+
+Some afternoons the _Casco_ swarmed with these strange visitors who were
+always delighted at the refreshments of ship's biscuits and pineapple
+syrup and water offered them. A certain chief was particularly taken
+with a pair of gloves belonging to Mrs. Stevenson, senior. He smelled of
+them, called them British tattooing, and insisted on her putting them on
+and off a great many times.
+
+The entire family fell quickly into the island mode of living; dressed
+as the white inhabitants did; ate all the strange kinds of native food;
+and when ashore lived in the native houses, which resembled bird-cages
+on stilts. The climate suited them to perfection, and Stevenson
+particularly benefited by it, bathing daily in the warm surf and taking
+long walks along the beach in search of strange shells.
+
+"Here we are," his mother wrote to Cummie, "in a little bay surrounded
+by green mountains, on which sheep are grazing, and there are birds very
+like our own 'blackies' singing in the trees. If it were not for the
+groves of cocoanut palms, we might almost fancy ourselves in our own
+dear land. But the climate here is simply perfect. Of course it is hot,
+but there are always fresh breezes.... We have our principal meal at
+twelve o'clock, and spend the after part of the day on shore ...
+bathing, gathering shells, knitting, or reading. Our Japanese cook and
+steward just sets out the table with cold meats, fruit, and cake so that
+we can take our other meal at any time in the evening that suits us.
+
+"Fanny and I are dressed like natives, in two garments. As we have to
+wade to and from the boat in landing and coming back, we discard
+stockings, and on the sands we usually go barefoot entirely. Louis wears
+only a shirt and trousers with the legs and arms rolled up as far as
+they will go, and he is always barefooted. You will therefore not be
+surprised to hear that we are all as red as lobsters. It is a strange
+irresponsible half savage life, and I sometimes wonder if we shall ever
+be able to return to civilized habits again.
+
+[Illustration: South Sea houses]
+
+"The natives are very simple and kindly people. The Roman Catholic
+priests have persuaded them to give up their constant wars and the
+practice of cannibalism, though only within recent years....
+
+"Louis has learned a good many words of the language, and with the help
+of signs can contrive to carry on a conversation, but I have stuck fast
+with two words: '_ka-oha_' which means 'How do you do?' 'thank you,' and
+'good bye,' and I am not quite sure how much else, and '_Mitai_,'
+meaning good, nice, pretty, kind. I don't expect to get beyond these,
+but it is wonderful how much one can express with them....
+
+"The natives have got names for us all. Louis was at first 'the old
+man,' much to his distress; but now they call him '_Ona_' meaning owner
+of the yacht, a name he greatly prefers to the first. Fanny is _Vahine_,
+or wife; I am the _old woman_, and Lloyd rejoices in the name of _Maté
+Karahi_, the young man with glass eyes (spectacles). Perhaps it is a
+compliment here to be called old, as it is in China, at any rate, one
+native told Louis that he himself was old, but his mother was not!...
+
+"A native dance was got up for our benefit. None of the dancing-women
+appeared, but five men dressed in shirt and trousers, danced together
+with spirit and grace. The music was provided by a drum, made out of an
+old tin box. Many of the steps reminded me of a Highland reel, but were
+curiously mixed up with calisthenic, and even gymnastic exercises; the
+hands in particular were used very gracefully, and they often took off
+their hats and waved them to and fro. But they also climbed on each
+other's shoulders, and did other strange things. After dancing for some
+time, they sang songs to us in a curious, low, weird kind of crooning.
+Altogether it was a strange sort of afternoon party!"
+
+The Marquesas Islands belong to the French, and the commandant in
+charge was most cordial to Stevenson, inviting him to his house
+frequently during his stay in the islands. When at the expiration of six
+weeks it was time for the _Casco_ to weigh anchor and the party sailed
+on to explore still farther, they left behind them many friends who
+regretted their departure. Here as elsewhere in the South Seas,
+Stevenson showed his sympathy and kindliness toward the island people
+regardless of who they were or their rank. White or half-caste priest,
+missionary, or trader, all were treated the same. No bribe, he said,
+would induce him to call the natives savages.
+
+Mr. Johnstone, an English resident in the South Seas at the time of
+Stevenson's visit, says: "His inborn courtesy more than any of his other
+good traits, endeared him to his fellows in the Pacific ... in the
+hearts of our Island people he built a monument more lasting than stone
+or brass."
+
+The recollection of the history of his own wild Scottish Islands, the
+people and conditions his grandfather found among them, helped him to
+understand these people and account for many of their actions. Though at
+opposite ends of the earth, many of their customs and legends
+corresponded. The dwellers in the Hebrides in the old days likewise
+lived in clans with their chief and struggled to retain their
+independence against an invading power.
+
+Tahiti, one of the group of Society Islands, was their next stopping
+place. Before starting a new mate was shipped, who was more familiar
+with the course, which lay through the Dangerous Archipelago--a group of
+low, badly lighted islands.
+
+The Society Islands are most beautiful, Tahiti probably the gem of them
+all, but on arriving Stevenson was in no condition to appreciate their
+loveliness. A cold contracted on the trip made him quite ill. The trip
+had proved very dangerous even with the aid of a pilot, and twice they
+gave themselves up for lost when they were becalmed and drifted in
+toward the shore. "The reefs were close in," wrote Stevenson, "with my
+eye! What a surf! The pilot thought we were gone and the captain had a
+boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue."
+
+After landing his condition became so much worse his wife grew desperate
+and determined to find a comfortable spot for him. After much trouble a
+Chinaman with a team was secured, who agreed to drive the entire family
+to Tautira, the largest village, sixteen miles away over a road crossed
+by no less than twenty-one streams. On this uncertain venture they
+started, with the head of the family in a state of collapse, knowing
+nothing of the village they were going to or the living it would afford
+them.
+
+None of them ever regretted the perseverance which led them on, however,
+for in all their wanderings in the South Seas before or after no place
+ever charmed them more, or were they received with greater hospitality
+than in Tautira.
+
+The day after their arrival, Moe, an island princess and an ex-queen,
+visited them. When she found Stevenson ill she insisted he and his
+family be moved to her own house where they could have more comforts.
+The house at the time was occupied by Ori, a subchief, a subject and
+relative of the princess. But he and his family gladly turned out to
+make room for the visitors and lived in a tiny house near by.
+
+"Ori is the very finest specimen of native we have seen yet," wrote Mrs.
+Stevenson. "He is several inches over six feet, of perfect though almost
+gigantic proportions."
+
+As soon as her husband was strong enough to be about again he and Ori
+became great friends. Finally, according to an island custom, Stevenson
+was adopted into Ori's clan and became his brother. This likewise meant
+exchanging names and Ori became Rui, the nearest possible approach to
+Louis since there is no L or S in the Tahitian language. Louis in turn
+became Teriitera (pronounced Ter_ee_terah), which was Ori's Christian
+name, Ori standing merely for his clan title.
+
+To show their gratitude for the hospitality shown them by Ori and the
+people of the village, Stevenson decided to give a public feast.
+
+The feast day was set for Wednesday, and the previous Sunday a chief
+issued the invitations from the Farehau, a house resembling an enormous
+bird-cage in the centre of the village, from which all the news was read
+aloud to the people once a week.
+
+A feast of such size necessitated much preparation.
+
+"The chief, who was our guide in the matter," wrote Mrs. Stevenson,
+"found four large fat hogs, which Louis bought, and four cases of ship's
+biscuit were sent over from the Casco, which is lying at Papeete for
+repairs.... Our hogs were killed in the morning, washed in the sea, and
+roasted whole in a pit with hot stones. When done they were laid on
+their stomachs in neat open coffins of green basket work, each hog with
+his case of biscuits beside him. Early in the morning the entire
+population began bathing, a bath being the preliminary to everything.
+At about three o'clock--four was the hour set--there was a general
+movement toward our premises, so that I had to hurry Louis into his
+clothes, all white even to his shoes. Lloyd was also in white, but
+barefoot.... The chief, who speaks French very well, stood beside Louis
+to interpret for him. By the time we had taken our respective places on
+the veranda in front of our door, an immense crowd had assembled. They
+came in five detachments.... Each set of people came bending under the
+weight of bamboo poles laden with fruits, figs, fowls, etc. All were
+dressed in their gayest and many had wreaths of leaves or flowers on
+their heads. The prettiest sight of all was the children, who came
+marching two and two abreast, the bamboo poles lying lengthwise across
+their shoulders.
+
+"When all the offerings had been piled in five great heaps upon the
+ground, Louis made his oration to the accompaniment of the squealing of
+pigs, the cackling of hens, and the roar of the surf.... A speech was
+made in return on behalf of the village.... Each speaker finished by
+coming forward with one of the smaller things in his hand, which he
+offered personally to Louis, and then shook hands with us all and
+retired. Among these smaller presents were many fish-hooks for large
+fishing, laboriously carved from mother-of-pearl shell. One man came
+with one egg in each hand saying 'carry these to Scotland with you, let
+them hatch into cocks, and their song shall remind you of Tautira.' The
+schoolmaster, with a leaf-basket of rose apples, made his speech in
+French."
+
+While overhauling the _Casco_ two or three days before they planned to
+leave Tautira, Captain Otis was shocked to find the whole upper half of
+the main masthead completely eaten out by dry-rot. This necessitated
+taking the schooner around to Papeete, on the other side of the island,
+for repairs. Under ordinary circumstances the setting of a new masthead
+need to have delayed them but a few days; in the South Seas, however,
+it was a different matter. Only after searching for days in Papeete was
+he able to find a man who knew anything of ship-carpentering, and when
+found he worked according to his own sweet will. So it was five weeks
+before the _Casco_ was ready to return for her passengers, who in the
+meantime were in a state of anxiety as to her whereabouts.
+
+During their enforced stay Ori treated the entire family like a brother
+indeed, doing everything in his power to make their visit pleasant.
+
+At last, on Christmas Day, they were ready to depart. The entire
+population of Tautira came to the beach to bid them farewell, and as the
+_Casco_ swung out of the harbor one of the French officials fired a
+salute of twenty-one guns with his army rifle and the schooner returned
+it with a heavy-tongued Winchester.
+
+Tautira had grown to seem like a real home to all of them. To leave it
+with very little hope of ever returning to see such good friends as
+Princess Moe and Ori was a real grief, while they in their turn were
+quite heart-broken. Stevenson's friendship had brought something into
+their lives they had never had before.
+
+Honolulu was the goal of the _Casco_ now, and all eagerly looked forward
+to the letters waiting for them there--the first word from home since
+leaving San Francisco.
+
+Bad weather attended the _Casco_ all the way. They were delayed by a
+succession of hurricanes and calms until the supply of food ran very low
+and they were reduced to a diet of "salt-horse" and ship-biscuit.
+
+The last forty-eight hours of their run was made in the very teeth of a
+furious gale when the captain took big risks by carrying full sail, with
+the hope of making port before their supply of food and water was
+entirely exhausted. In spite of the danger, Stevenson enjoyed this
+daring run hugely. Later, when he and Lloyd wrote "The Wrecker"
+together, this very episode figured in the story, Captain Otis under the
+name of Captain Nares performing a similar sail-carrying feat on the
+schooner _Norah Creina_.
+
+Mrs. Strong, Stevenson's stepdaughter, and her family were waiting in
+Honolulu and gave them a warm welcome. The travellers soon found
+themselves the centre of interest among Mrs. Strong's large circle of
+friends and it was with difficulty Stevenson found time to finish the
+last chapters of "The Master of Ballantrae," which he had been working
+on since leaving Saranac.
+
+Honolulu, with its street-cars, shops, electric lights, and mixture of
+native and foreign population, seemed strangely crowded and modern after
+the scenes they had recently left; too modern by far to suit Stevenson,
+who preferred the unconventional wild life of the islands they had come
+from.
+
+At the Royal Palace in Honolulu, Kalakaua, the last of the Hawaiian
+kings, still held court. He enjoyed R.L.S. and invited him often to the
+palace and told him the history and legends of many of the islands of
+the South Seas. It was from Kalakaua he first learned to know the
+troubled history of the Samoan Islands and of Apia, which was to be his
+future home.
+
+The Island of Molokai, the leper colony, lay not far off. While in
+Honolulu he spent several days there, in the place where Father Damien
+had lately done his splendid work.
+
+According to their original scheme they were to return home from
+Honolulu, but having come so far they were eager to see more. They had
+tasted the dangers and fascination of the life among the wild islands,
+each so different, and it had only whetted their appetites for what lay
+still beyond. The chances of coming so far again were slight; it seemed
+too good an opportunity to miss. So Stevenson wrote to the friends at
+home, whom he longed daily to see: "Yes--I own up--I am untrue to
+friendship and (what is less, but still considerable) to civilization. I
+am not coming home for another year.... But look here and judge me
+tenderly. I have had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months
+than ever before, and more health than any time in ten long years....
+And this precious deep is filled with islands which we may still visit,
+and though the sea is a dreadful place, I like to be there, and like
+squalls (when they are over) and to draw near to a new island I can not
+say how much I like....
+
+"Remember me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking
+about, as jolly as a sand boy; you will own the temptation is strong;
+and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay into the
+bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home now,
+with an imperfect book ... and perhaps fall sick again by autumn.
+
+"It is a singular thing that as I was packing up old papers ere I left
+Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland sibyl, when I
+was sixteen. She said I was to be very happy,--to visit America and _to
+be much upon the sea_.... I can not say why I like the sea ... my poor
+grandfather it is from him I inherit the taste I fancy, and he was
+around many islands in his day; but I, please God, shall beat him at
+that before the recall is sounded."
+
+So the _Casco_ was shipped back to San Francisco, Mrs. Stevenson,
+senior, returned to Scotland for a visit, and the trading schooner
+_Equator_ was chartered for a trip among the Marshall, Gilbert, and
+Samoan Islands.
+
+Just before leaving, the following letter came from Ori, which Stevenson
+says he would rather have received than written "Red Gauntlet" or the
+"Sixth Æneid."
+
+"I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I
+was filled with tears; my wife Rui Telime, also, and all my household.
+When you embarked I felt great sorrow. It is for this that I went upon
+the road, and you looked from that ship, and I looked at you on the ship
+with great grief until you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sail.
+When the ship started I ran along the beach to see you still; and when
+you were in the open sea I cried out to you 'Farewell Louis,' and when
+I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice crying, 'Rui,
+farewell.' Afterwards I watched the ship as long as I could until the
+night fell; and when it was dark I said to myself: 'If I had wings I
+should fly to the ship to meet you,'... I wept then ... telling myself
+continually, 'Teriitera returns to his own country and leaves his dear
+Rui in grief.'... I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the
+thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my Teriitera makes the only
+riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see
+again. It must be that your body and my body shall eat together at one
+table, there is what would make my heart content. But now we are
+separated. May God be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with
+you, so that you may be well and we also, according to the words of
+Paul.
+
+"ORI A ORI, that is to say, RUI."
+
+"All told," said Stevenson, "if my books have enabled or helped me to
+make this voyage, to know Rui, and to have received such a letter, they
+have ... not been writ in vain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+VAILIMA
+
+  "We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that
+  unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which
+  we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the
+  bright skies that make our lives delightful, for the friends in all
+  parts of the earth, and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle....
+  Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our
+  friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our
+  innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us strength to encounter that
+  which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in
+  tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and
+  down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another." R.L.S.
+
+                        --_Prayer used with the household at Vailima_.
+
+
+On the 7th of December, when the family landed at Upolu, the chief of
+the Samoas or Samoan Islands, they little dreamed it was to be their
+home for the next four years and the last the master of the house was
+ever to know.
+
+It had been frequently borne upon Stevenson, however, while cruising
+among the Marshall and Gilbert Islands during the past months, that a
+home in either England or Scotland again was a vain dream for him.
+
+"I do not ask for health," he said, "but I will go anywhere and live in
+any place where I can enjoy the existence of a human being." He seldom
+complained and it is rare to find even the brave sort of cry he made
+against fate to a friend at this time.
+
+"For fourteen years I have not had a day's real health. I have wakened
+sick and gone to bed weary, and I have done my work unflinchingly. I
+have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages,
+written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam
+for weakness, and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and
+recovered my glove. I am better now, have been, rightly speaking, since
+I first came to the Pacific; and still few are the days when I am not in
+some physical distress. And the battle goes on--ill or well, is a
+trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so
+willed that my battlefield shall be this dingy inglorious one of the
+bed and the physics bottle."
+
+Here in the tropics he might hope to live and work years longer--a
+return to a cold climate, he now knew, would be fatal.
+
+Why not turn traders? Often on starry nights, drifting among the low
+islands, he and Lloyd and the captain of the _Equator_ had lain out on
+deck and planned what a lark it would be to buy a schooner, cruise among
+the islands, and trade with the natives. They would write stories, too,
+about these strange island dwellers with their many weird superstitions
+and of the white men who drifted from all corners of the globe to make
+their home there.
+
+Already Captain Reid had told them many such tales which Stevenson wove
+into stories. The "Beach of Falesá" and the "Isle of Voices" are
+probably the two most famous, while "the strange story of the loss of
+the brigantine Wandering Minstrel and what men and ships do in that wild
+and beautiful world beyond the American continent" formed a plot for
+the story called "The Wrecker," which he and Lloyd Osbourne wrote
+together later on.
+
+Samoa was a place he was eager to visit. King Kalakaua at Honolulu had
+already told him much of its troubled history. The group of thirteen
+islands lay about four thousand two hundred miles southwest of San
+Francisco. At that time they were under the control of England, Germany,
+and the United States according to a treaty entered into in 1889. These
+countries appointed a chief justice, a president of the municipal
+council, three consuls, and three land commissioners. A native king was
+likewise recognized on each island.
+
+This triple control proved most unsatisfactory and for years past there
+had been constant friction among the officials and warlike outbreaks
+among the natives.
+
+These complications interested Stevenson. His first idea had been to
+stop there but a short time. He now found he wanted to remain in Samoa
+long enough to write its history.
+
+The Samoans are true Polynesians; a strong and handsome race whose
+reputation is high among all the people of the Pacific. The large
+majority have become Christians, but in spite of the influence of the
+missionaries and the foreign powers who control them, they retain many
+of their old customs and habits. They are naturally peace-loving in
+spite of their many wars. Fighting does not appeal to them for its own
+sake, and they enjoy a good family life, treating their women with great
+respect and lavishing affection upon their children.
+
+Stevenson wanted those at home to know these people better; his
+sympathy, which was ever with the weaker side, was instantly aroused in
+behalf of the natives, and he wanted to tell their side of the story.
+
+If they were to make a home anywhere in the South Seas there could be no
+better spot than Apia, the principal port and capital of these islands,
+as it had a good mail service, a most important feature to a writer.
+The monthly mail-steamers between San Francisco and Sydney, as well as
+other Australian mail-boats, stopped there.
+
+So he purchased four hundred acres on the hills three miles from Apia
+and preparations were immediately made for clearing the ground and
+building a house. Lloyd Osbourne left for England to bring back the
+household treasures from Skerryvore, to make a real home, and Stevenson
+and his wife lived gypsy fashion meanwhile in a four-room wooden house.
+
+The new home was named Vailima, which is Samoan for "Five Waters," there
+being five streams running through the property.
+
+The house was built of wood, painted dark green with a red roof. When
+finished its chief feature was the great hall within, sixty feet long,
+lined and ceiled with California redwood. Here among the home
+treasures--his own portrait, war dresses, corselets, fans, and mats
+presented to him by island kings--the marble bust of grandfather
+Stevenson smiled down with approval on many a motley gathering. Louis
+often wondered if they reminded the old gentleman of some of the strange
+people he had entertained years ago in Baxter Place.
+
+All about was dense, tropical undergrowth, only paths led to the house,
+and these must continually be cut out. All carrying was done by two big
+New Zealand pack-horses.
+
+A large garden was planted--Mrs. Stevenson's special hobby. Cocoanuts,
+oranges, guavas, and mangoes already grew on the estate. The ground was
+very fertile, and kava, the root of which is used for the Samoan
+national drink, pineapples, sweet potatoes, and eggplants were soon
+flourishing among other things. Limes were so plentiful that they formed
+the hedge about the place; citrons were so common that they rotted on
+the trees.
+
+[Illustration: The house at Vailima]
+
+All this ground-breaking, house-building, and gardening were new to
+Stevenson, and he revelled in them to the neglect of his writing.
+
+"This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life we lead now," he
+wrote to Sidney Colvin. "Our place is in a deep cleft of Væa Mountain;
+some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest, which is our
+strangling enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I am crazy
+over outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or
+literature must have gone by the board. _Nothing_ is so interesting as
+weeding, clearing, and pathmaking; the oversight of laborers becomes a
+disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does
+make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with
+sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take
+a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience."
+
+Before his arrival in Apia, Stevenson's tale of "The Bottle Imp" had
+been translated into Samoan by the missionaries. When the natives
+discovered he was its author they immediately named him Tusitala, The
+Teller-of-Tales. He still owned the bottle, they said; it was that gave
+him the wealth to cruise about in a great boat and build a fine house.
+The family often wondered why native visitors were curious to see the
+inside of the great safe in the hall at Vailima until they found that it
+was the belief among the islanders that the safe was the bottle's
+hiding-place.
+
+Mrs. Stevenson, senior, returned with Lloyd from England, and later Mrs.
+Strong and her small son, Austin, came from Honolulu to make the family
+complete.
+
+The servants were all natives, "boys" as they called themselves. There
+were usually about half a dozen about the house, with a boy for the
+garden and to look after the cows and pigs, besides a band of outside
+laborers, varying from half a dozen to thirty, under Lloyd's direction.
+
+Sosimo was Stevenson's particular boy. He waited upon him hand and foot,
+looked after his clothes and his pony "Jack," and was devoted in every
+way. His loyalty to his master lasted to the end of his own life.
+
+The servants were governed on something very like the clan system. A
+Vailima tartan was adopted for special occasions and Stevenson
+encouraged them to think of the household as a family, to take interest
+and pride in all its doings.
+
+On Sunday evenings the entire household was assembled. A chapter of the
+Samoan Bible was read and Samoan hymns sung. Then a prayer in English
+written by Stevenson was read, concluding with the Lord's Prayer in
+Samoan.
+
+If the master had cause to be displeased with any one of them, they were
+all summoned and reprimanded or fined.
+
+His stories delighted them. They were never tired of looking at the
+picture of Skerryvore Light and hearing about the rugged coasts of
+Tusitala's native island and of his father and grandfather who built
+lighthouses. The latter impressed them greatly, since building of any
+kind in Samoa is considered a fine art. The deeds of General Gordon, the
+Indian Mutiny, and Lucknow were likewise favorite tales when Tusitala
+showed them a treasure he prized highly: a message written by General
+Gordon from Khartoum. It was in Arabic on a small piece of
+cigarette-paper which might be easily swallowed should the messenger be
+captured. Stevenson always believed it to be the last message sent
+before the great general's death.
+
+They came to him for everything and he was ever ready with help and
+advice. They were quick to appreciate his justice and kindliness, and to
+a man were devoted to him. "Once Tusitala's friend, always Tusitala's
+friend," they said.
+
+With his customary energy he threw himself heart and soul for a time
+into the political troubles of the island, making himself the champion
+of the natives' cause. He wrote a series of letters to the papers at
+home stating his idea of the injustice shown the Samoans under their
+present government. It was a most delicate situation, and at times led
+to very strained relations between himself and the officials in Apia.
+
+Those at home wondered why Stevenson tampered with island politics at
+all. Why did he not simply leave them to the powers in charge?
+
+His answer was, he had made Samoa his home, the Samoans were his people,
+and he could not fail to resent any injustice shown them.
+
+Lloyd Osbourne says: "He was consulted on every imaginable subject....
+Government chiefs and rebels consulted him with regard to policy;
+political letters were brought to him to read and criticise.... Parties
+would come to hear the latest news of the proposed disarming of the
+country, or to arrange a private audience with one of the officials; and
+poor war-worn chieftains, whose only anxiety was to join the winning
+side and who wished to consult with Tusitala as to which that might be.
+Mr. Stevenson would sigh sometimes as he saw these stately folks
+crossing the lawn in single file, their attendants following behind with
+presents and baskets, but he never failed to meet or hear them."
+
+He aided one party of chieftains in prison, and to show their gratitude
+on regaining their freedom they cleared and dug a splendid road leading
+to his house. All the labor and expense they bore themselves, which
+amounted to no small matter. Ala Loto Alofa, they called it, the Road of
+the Loving Hearts.
+
+Warlike outbreaks were not infrequent near Vailima. The woods were often
+full of scouting parties and the roll of drums could be heard. One day
+as Stevenson and Mrs. Strong were writing together they were interrupted
+by a war party crossing the lawn. Mrs. Strong asked: "Louis, have we a
+pistol or gun in the house that will shoot?" and he answered cheerfully
+without stopping his work: "No, but we have friends on both sides."
+
+With all their political differences he and the officials retained
+friendly feeling. He paid calls on them at Apia and attended various
+town gatherings, while they were often entertained at Vailima.
+
+Always hospitable, it was a delight to him now to keep open house. Not
+only the chief justice, the consuls, the doctor, the missionaries, and
+the traders were in the habit of dropping in to Vailima, but from every
+ship that docked at Apia came some visitor who was anxious to meet
+Stevenson and his family; from the war-ships came the officers and
+sailors.
+
+The bluejackets were always particularly welcome. Mrs. Strong tells of a
+party who came from H.M.S. _Wallaroo_ on one Thanksgiving Day, when "the
+kitchen department was in great excitement over that foreign bird the
+turkey" and all was confusion. "But Louis kept his sailors on all the
+afternoon. He took them over the house and showed them ... the
+curiosities from the islands, the big picture of Skerryvore
+lighthouse,... the treasured bit of Gordon's handwriting from Khartoum,
+in Arabic letters on a cigarette paper,... and the library, where the
+Scotchmen gathered about an old edition of Burns, with a portrait. Louis
+gave a volume of Underwoods (Stevenson's poems) with an inscription to
+Grant, the one who hailed from Edinburgh, and the man carried it
+carefully wrapped in his handkerchief. They went away waving their hats
+and keeping step."
+
+A croquet-ground and tennis-court were laid out, and Vailima was the
+scene of balls, dinners, and parties of all kinds. No birthday or
+holiday, English, American, or Samoan, was allowed to pass unnoticed,
+and the natives were included in these festivities whenever possible.
+
+The first Christmas at Vailima they had a party for the children who had
+never before seen a Christmas tree.
+
+Tusitala's birthday was always a special event to his island friends.
+The feast was served in native style; all seated about on the floor.
+Rather large gatherings they must have been, to judge from Mrs. Strong's
+account. "We had sixteen pigs roasted whole underground, three enormous
+fish (small whales, Lloyd called them), four hundred pounds of beef,
+ditto of pork, 200 heads of taro, great bunches of bananas, native
+delicacies done up in bundles of _ti_ leaves, 800 pineapples, many
+weighing fifteen pounds, all from Lloyd's patch. Among the presents for
+Tusitala, besides flowers and wreaths, were fans, native baskets ... and
+cocoanut cups beautifully polished."
+
+[Illustration: A feast of chiefs]
+
+On these occasions the hosts were often entertained with dances and
+songs. All the Samoans are great singers. They composed songs about
+everything and everybody, so that one could judge the standing a person
+held by the songs that were sung about him.
+
+Those sung at Vailima parties were usually written by one of the house
+"boys" and "they were danced and acted with great spirit.... Sometimes
+every member of the family would be represented ... but the central
+figure, the heart of the song was always Tusitala."
+
+It is a marvel with the many demands made upon him, his varied
+interests, and frequent visits to neighboring islands, Stevenson still
+found time to write stories, poems, prayers, notes of the South Sea
+Islands, Samoan history, and many, many letters. "It is a life that
+suits me but absorbs me like an ocean," he said. Through it all his
+health continued fairly good. He was able to take long tramps and rides
+that would have been physically impossible two years before.
+
+Mrs. Strong acted as his secretary and the majority of his writing now
+was done by dictation. "He generally makes notes early in the morning,"
+she wrote, "which he elaborates as he reads them aloud ... he never
+falters for a word, but gives me the sentence with capital letters and
+all the stops as clearly and steadily as though he were reading from an
+unseen book."
+
+The two South Sea books occupied much of his time, but it was of his own
+land and people so far away that he had so little hope of ever seeing
+again, he loved best to write.
+
+"It is a singular thing," he wrote to James Barrie, "that I should live
+here in the South Seas, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit
+the cold old huddle of grey hills from which we came."
+
+He finished and sent away further adventures of David Balfour and Alan
+Breck under the title of "David Balfour." "St. Ives" followed with its
+scenes laid around Edinburgh Castle, Swanston Cottage, and the Pentland
+Hills. In his last book, "Weir of Hermiston," the one he left
+unfinished, broken off in the midst of a word, he roamed the streets of
+Auld Reekie again with a hero very like what he had once been himself,
+who was likewise an enthusiastic member of the "Spec."
+
+Something which pleased him greatly at this time was the news from his
+friend Charles Baxter in Edinburgh that a complete edition of his works
+was to be published in the best possible form with a limited number of
+copies, to be called the "Edinburgh Edition."
+
+"I suppose it was your idea to give it that name," Stevenson wrote,
+thanking him. "No other would have affected me in the same manner....
+Could a more presumptuous idea have occurred to us in those days when we
+used to search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine
+forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, than
+that I should be strong and well at the age of forty three in the island
+of Upolu, and that you should be at home bringing out the 'Edinburgh
+Edition'?"
+
+In spite of the many interests in his present life, his love for the
+people and the country, the yearning for the friends far away grew
+daily.
+
+How he longed to have them see Vailima with all its beauties! To talk
+over old times again. Such visits were continually planned, but they
+were never realized.
+
+He seldom complained and those who were with him every day rarely found
+him low in spirits. It was into the letters to his old intimates that
+these longings crept when it swept over him that, though a voluntary
+exile in a pleasant place, he was an exile none the less, with the fate
+of him who wrote:
+
+ "There's a track across the deep,
+  And a path across the sea,
+  But for me there's nae return
+  To my ain countree."
+
+"When the smell of the good wet earth" came to him it came "with a kind
+of Highland tone." A tropic shower found him in a "frame of mind and
+body that belonged to Scotland." And when he turned to write the
+chronicle of his grandfather's life and work, the beautiful words in
+which he described the old gentleman's farewell to "Sumbraugh and the
+wild crags of Skye" meant likewise his own farewell to those shores. No
+more was he to "see the topaz and ruby interchange on the summit of Bell
+Rock," no more to see "the castle on its hills," or the venerable city
+which he always thought of as his home.
+
+"Like Leyden," he wrote, "I have gone into a far land to die, not stayed
+like Burns to mingle in the end with Scottish soil."
+
+It was drawing near the close of their fourth year in Apia. On November
+13 his birthday had been celebrated with the usual festivities, and on
+Thanksgiving Day he had given a dinner to his American friends--and then
+the end of all his wanderings and working came suddenly.
+
+"He wrote hard all that morning of the last day," says Lloyd Osbourne,
+"on his half-finished book Hermiston.... In the afternoon the mail fell
+to be answered; not business correspondence--but replies to the long,
+kindly letters of distant friends, received but two days since, and
+still bright in memory.
+
+"At sunset he came downstairs.... He was helping his wife on the
+verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he put both hands to his
+head, and cried out, 'What's that?' Then he asked quickly, 'Do I look
+strange?' Even as he did so he fell on his knees beside her. He was
+helped into the great hall, between his wife and body-servant, Sosimo,
+losing consciousness instantly, as he lay back in the arm-chair that had
+once been his grandfather's. Little time was lost in bringing the
+doctors, Anderson of the man-of-war, and his friend Dr. Funk. They
+looked at him and shook their heads ... he had passed the bounds of
+human skill....
+
+"The dozen and more Samoans that formed part of the clan of which he was
+chief, sat in a wide semicircle on the floor, their reverent, troubled,
+sorrow-stricken faces all fixed upon their dying master. Some knelt on
+one knee to be instantly ready for any command that might be laid upon
+them....
+
+"He died at ten minutes past eight on Monday evening the 3rd of
+December, in the forty-fifth year of his age.
+
+"The great Union Jack that flew over the house was hauled down and laid
+over the body, fit shroud for a loyal Scotsman. He lay in the hall which
+was ever his pride, where he had passed the gayest and most delightful
+hours of his life.... In it were the treasures of his far off Scottish
+home.... The Samoans passed in procession beside his bed, kneeling and
+kissing his hand, each in turn, before taking their places for the long
+night watch beside him. No entreaty could induce them to retire, to
+rest themselves for the painful arduous duties of the morrow. It would
+show little love for Tusitala, they said, if they did not spend their
+last night beside him. Mournful and silent, they sat in deep dejection,
+poor, simple, loyal folks, fulfilling the duty that they owed their
+chief.
+
+"A messenger was dispatched to a few chiefs connected with the family,
+to announce the tidings and bid them assemble their men on the morrow
+for the work there was to do....
+
+"The morning of the 4th of December broke cool and sunny.... A meeting
+of chiefs was held to apportion the work and divide the men into
+parties. Forty were sent with knives and axes to cut a path up the steep
+face of the mountain, and the writer himself led another party to the
+summit--men chosen from the immediate family--to dig the grave on the
+spot where it was Robert Louis Stevenson's wish that he should lie....
+Nothing more picturesque can be imagined than the ledge that forms the
+summit to Væa, a place no wider than a room, and flat as a table. On
+either side the land descends precipitously; in front lies the vast
+ocean and surf-swept reefs; to the right and left green mountains
+rise....
+
+"All the morning Samoans were arriving with flowers, few of these were
+white, for they have not learned our foreign custom, and the room glowed
+with the many colors. There were no strangers on that day, no
+acquaintances; those only were called who would deeply feel the loss. At
+one o'clock a body of powerful Samoans bore away the coffin, hid beneath
+a tattered red ensign that had flown above his vessel in many a remote
+corner of the South Seas. A path so steep and rugged taxed their
+strength to the utmost, for not only was the journey difficult in
+itself, but extreme care was requisite to carry the coffin shoulder
+high....
+
+"No stranger hand touched him.... Those who loved him carried him to his
+last home; even the coffin was the work of an old friend. The grave was
+dug by his own men."
+
+Tusitala had left them, and his friends in the South Seas had lost a
+faithful friend and companion, a wise and just master.
+
+His family and friends the world over had lost not only these but far
+more. His life had been a chivalrous one with all the best that chivalry
+stands for, "loyalty, honesty, generosity, courage, courtesy, and
+self-devotion; to impute no unworthy motives and to bear no grudges; to
+bear misfortune with cheerfulness and without a murmur; to strike hard
+for the right and to take no mean advantage; to be gentle to women and
+kind to all that are weak; to be rigorous with oneself and very lenient
+to others--these ... were the traits that distinguished Stevenson."
+
+"They do not make life easy as he frequently found."
+
+His resting-place on the crest of Væa Mountain is covered by a tomb of
+gray stone. On one side is inscribed in English the verses he had
+written for his own requiem:
+
+   A            ROBERT LOUIS     [Symbol: Omega]
+  1850           STEVENSON            1894
+
+    "Under the wide and starry sky,
+     Dig the grave and let me lie,
+     Glad did I live and gladly die,
+     And I laid me down with a will.
+
+    "This be the verse you grave for me:
+     Here he lies where he longed to be;
+     Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
+     And the hunter home from the hill."
+
+[Illustration: The tomb of Stevenson on Væa Mountain]
+
+On the other side, written in Samoan and surrounded by carvings of
+thistles, his native flowers, and the hibiscus flowers, emblem of the
+South, are the words from the Bible:
+
+  "Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge;
+  thy people shall be my people; and thy God my God; where thou diest
+  will I die, and there will I be buried."
+
+The Samoan chiefs have forbidden the use of firearms upon Væa hillside,
+"that the birds may live there undisturbed, and raise above his grave
+the songs he loved so well."
+
+ "Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales,
+  Giver of counsels and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight,
+  Looks o'er the labours of men in the plain and the hills; and the sails
+  Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night."
+
+                                                           --ANDREW LANG.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+SOME WORKS IN RELATION TO STEVENSON'S LIFE, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF AND
+OTHERS
+
+
+GENERAL BIOGRAPHY
+
+Balfour, Graham: "Life of Robert Louis Stevenson." Two vols.
+
+Colvin, Sidney, ed.: "Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson," with
+biographical notes and an introduction by the editor.
+
+Simpson, E. Blantyre: "The Robert Louis Stevenson Originals."
+
+Strong, Mrs. Isobel: "Robert Louis Stevenson."
+
+Watts, Lauchlan Maclean: "Hills of Home"--with Pentland Essays by R.L.
+Stevenson.
+
+Watts: "Robert Louis Stevenson."
+
+
+ANCESTORS
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "A Family of Engineers."
+
+----"Thomas Stevenson"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+Stevenson: "Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh"--In "Essays of Travel and in
+the Art of Writing."
+
+Talbot, F.A.: "Lightships and Lighthouses." Chapters relating to the
+building of Bell Rock and Skerryvore.
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "To My Father." "Skerryvore."
+
+
+CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "The Manse"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Child's Play"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"The Lantern Bearers"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+----"Child's Garden of Verses."
+
+
+THE STUDENT AND WANDERER
+
+Simpson, E. Blantyre: "Robert Louis Stevenson's Edinburgh Days."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "An Apology for Idlers"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"Crabbed Age and Youth"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"Walking Tours"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"Some College Memories"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Old Mortality"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"A College Magazine"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Pastoral"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"An Old Scotch Gardener"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Books Which Have Influenced Me"--in "Later Essays."
+
+----"Memories of an Islet"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Random Memories"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+----"Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin."
+
+----"An Inland Voyage."
+
+----"Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes."
+
+Low, Will H.: "A Chronicle of Friendships." Chapters dealing with
+Stevenson's days in the artists' colonies of Fontainebleau and Paris.
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "The Vagabond."
+                    "The Song of the Road."
+                    "Bright is the Ring of Words."
+                    "Youth and Love," II.
+                    "The Canoe Speaks."
+                    "A Camp."
+                    "The Country of the Carnisards."
+                    "Our Lady of the Snows."
+                    "To a Gardener."
+                    "To Will H. Low."
+                    "To Andrew Lang."
+
+
+FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA
+
+Shipman, L.E.: "First Landing in New York"--In _Book Buyer_, vol. 13, p.
+13.
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "The Amateur Emigrant."
+
+----"Across the Plains."
+
+----"The Old Pacific Capital (Monterey)"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+----"The Silverado Squatters."
+
+
+SCOTLAND AGAIN
+
+Gosse, Edmund: "Personal Memories of Stevenson"--in _Century_, vol. 28,
+p. 447.
+
+Osbourne, Lloyd: "Stevenson at Play"--in _Scribner's Magazine_, vol. 24,
+p. 709.
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to Biographical edition of "Treasure
+Island."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "My First Book, 'Treasure Island'"--in _McClure's
+Magazine_, vol. 3, p. 283.
+
+----"Chapter on Dreams"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to the Biographical edition of "Dr. Jekyll
+and Mr. Hyde."
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "Skerryvore, the Parallel."
+                    "Bells upon the City are Ringing in the Night."
+                    "I Know Not How It Is With You."
+                    "Ticonderoga--a Legend of the West Highlands."
+                    "Heather Ale--a Galloway Legend."
+
+
+SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA
+
+Low, Will H.: "Chronicle of Friendships." Chapters relating to
+Stevenson's second visit to New York and his meeting with General
+Sherman and the sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
+
+Saint-Gaudens, Augustus: "Reminiscences of Saint-Gaudens." Chapters
+dealing with Mr. Saint-Gaudens's recollections of Stevenson at the time
+he made his portrait.
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters--From Saranac to the Marquesas and
+Beyond."
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "In the States."
+                    "Winter."
+
+
+IN THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters--From Saranac to the Marquesas and
+Beyond."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "In the South Seas."
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: "Cruise of the _Janet Nichol_ Among the South Sea
+Islands--a Diary."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "Beach of Falesá," "Isle of Voices," "Bottle Imp"--in
+"Island Nights' Entertainments."
+
+----"The Wrecker."
+
+----"The Ebb Tide."
+
+---- Letters Dealing with Pacific Voyages and Life in Samoa--in his
+collected letters edited by Sidney Colvin.
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters from Samoa."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "A Foot-Note to History. Eight Years of Trouble in
+Samoa."
+
+Strong, Mrs. Isobel, and Osbourne, Lloyd: "Memories of Vailima."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "Prayers Written at Vailima."
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "The Song of Rahéro--a Legend of Tahiti."
+                    "The Feast of Famine--Marquesan Manners."
+                    "To an Island Princess."
+                    "To Kalakaua."
+                    "To Princess Kaiulani."
+                    "The House of Tembinoka."
+                    "The Woodman."
+                    "Tropic Rain."
+                    "To My Wife."
+                    "To My Wife" (a fragment).
+
+Poems of Farewell: "The Morning Drum-Call on My Eager Ear."
+                   "In the Highlands, in the Country Places."
+                   "To My Old Familiars."
+                   "The Tropics Vanish."
+                   "To S.C."
+                   "To S.R. Crockett."
+                   "Evensong."
+                   "We Uncommiserate Pass into the Night."
+                   "I Have Trod the Upward and Downward Slope."
+                   "An End of Travel."
+                   "The Celestial Surgeon."
+                   "Home No More Home to Me, Whither Must I Wander?"
+                   "Farewell, Fair Day and Fading Light."
+                   "Requiem."
+
+Lang, Andrew: "Tusitala"--in "Later Collected Verses."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for
+Boys and Girls, by Jacqueline M. Overton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS ***
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+<head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
+          content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+    <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life of Robert Louis
+    Stevenson for Boys and Girls, by Jacqueline M. Overton.</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys
+and Girls, by Jacqueline M. Overton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls
+
+Author: Jacqueline M. Overton
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2005 [EBook #15547]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Govert Schipper and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <a name="image001"
+          id="image001"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:435px;">
+        <img src="images/image001.jpg"
+             width="435"
+             height="576"
+             alt=
+             "Robert Louis Stevenson, from a photograph by Lloyd Osbourne">
+             <span class="caption">Robert Louis Stevenson, from a
+             photograph by Lloyd Osbourne</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <h2>THE LIFE OF</h2>
+
+    <h1>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h1>
+
+    <h2>FOR BOYS AND GIRLS</h2>
+    <br>
+
+    <br>
+
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>BY</h3>
+
+    <h2>JACQUELINE M. OVERTON</h2>
+    <br>
+
+    <br>
+
+    <br>
+
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h2>NEW YORK
+    <br>
+     CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+    <br>
+     1933</h2>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <p class="center">TO THE BOYS AT THE YORKVILLE LIBRARY
+    <br>
+     AND
+    <br>
+     TO ALL OTHER BOYS
+    <br>
+     WHO LOVE TO TRAMP AND CAMP AND SEEK ADVENTURE
+    <br>
+     I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+    <br>
+     WITH THE HOPE OF MAKING THEM
+    <br>
+     BETTER FRIENDS WITH A MAN WHO ALSO
+    <br>
+     LOVED THESE THINGS</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CONTENTS"
+       id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+    <table summary="Contents"
+           align="left">
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: center"
+                colspan="2"><font size="-1">CHAPTER</font></td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">I.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>T<font size="-1">HE</font>
+            L<font size="-1">IGHTHOUSE</font> B<font size=
+            "-1">UILDERS</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">II.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>R<font size=
+            "-1">OBERT</font> L<font size="-1">OUIS</font>
+            S<font size="-1">TEVENSON</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">III.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>T<font size=
+            "-1">HE</font> L<font size="-1">ANTERN</font>
+            B<font size="-1">EARER</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">IV.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>E<font size=
+            "-1">DINBURGH</font> D<font size=
+            "-1">AYS</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">V.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>A<font size=
+            "-1">MATEUR</font> E<font size=
+            "-1">MIGRANT</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">VI.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>S<font size=
+            "-1">COTLAND</font> A<font size=
+            "-1">GAIN</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">VII.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>S<font size=
+            "-1">ECOND</font> V<font size="-1">ISIT TO</font>
+            A<font size="-1">MERICA</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">VIII.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>I<font size="-1">N
+            THE</font> S<font size="-1">OUTH</font>
+                  S<font size="-1">EAS</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right">IX.</td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>V<font size=
+            "-1">AILIMA</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td style="text-align: right"></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY"><b>B<font size=
+            "-1">IBLIOGRAPHY</font></b></a></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+    </table>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS"
+       id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+    <p><a href="#image001">Robert Louis Stevenson</a>
+    <br>
+     <font size="-1">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;From a photograph by
+    Mr. Lloyd Osbourne</font></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image002">No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh,
+    Stevenson's birthplace</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image003">Colinton Manse</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image004">Swanston Cottage</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image005">Edinburgh Castle</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image006">Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image007">The Treasure Island map</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image008">Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with
+    "An Inland Voyage"</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image009">Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus
+    Saint Gaudens</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image010">South Sea houses</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image011">The house at Vailima</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image012">A feast of chiefs</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image013">The tomb of Stevenson on Væa
+    Mountain</a></p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2>THE LIFE OF</h2>
+
+    <h2>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h2>
+
+    <h3>FOR BOYS AND GIRLS</h3>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <p class="blockquot">"Write me as one who loves his fellowmen."
+    <br>
+     <span style="text-align: center;">&mdash;H<font size=
+    "-1">UNT</font>.</span></p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_I"
+       id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+    <h3>THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS</h3>
+
+    <p class="poem">". . . For the sake
+    <br>
+     Of these, my kinsmen and my countrymen,
+    <br>
+     Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled
+    <br>
+     To plant a star for seamen."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>The pirate, Ralph the Rover, so legend tells, while cruising
+    off the coast of Scotland searching for booty or sport, sank
+    the warning bell on one of the great rocks, to plague the good
+    Abbot of Arbroath who had put it there. The following year the
+    Rover returned and perished himself on the same rock.</p>
+
+    <p>In the life of one of Scotland's great men, Robert Louis
+    Stevenson, we find proud record of his grandfather, Robert
+    Stevenson, having built Bell Rock Lighthouse on this same spot
+    years afterward.</p>
+
+    <p>No story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life would be complete
+    that failed to mention the work done for Scotland and the world
+    at large by the two men he held most dear, the engineers, his
+    father and grandfather.</p>
+
+    <p>When Robert Stevenson, his grandfather, received his
+    appointment on the Board of Northern Lights the art of
+    lighthouse building in Scotland had just begun. Its bleak,
+    rocky shores were world-famous for their danger, and few
+    mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast
+    "was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of
+    the Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and
+    fifty years old, an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer.
+    The whole archipelago thus nightly plunged in darkness was
+    shunned by seagoing vessels." <a name="FNanchor__1"
+       id="FNanchor__1"></a><a href="#Footnote__1"
+       class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+    <p>The board at first proposed building four new lights, but
+    afterward built many more, so that to-day Scotland stands
+    foremost among the nations for the number and splendor of her
+    coast lights.</p>
+
+    <p>Their construction in those early days meant working against
+    tremendous obstacles and dangers, and the life of the engineer
+    was a hazardous one.</p>
+
+    <p>"The seas into which his labors carried him were still
+    scarce charted, the coasts still dark; his way on shore was
+    often far beyond the convenience of any road; the isles in
+    which he must sojourn were still partly savage. He must toss
+    much in boats; he must often adventure much on horseback by
+    dubious bridle-track through unfrequented wildernesses; he must
+    sometimes plant his lighthouses in the very camp of
+    wreckers.</p>
+
+    <p>"The aid of steam was not yet. At first in random coasting
+    sloop, and afterwards in the cutter belonging to the service,
+    the engineer must ply and run amongst these multiplied dangers
+    and sometimes late into the stormy autumn."</p>
+
+    <p>All of which failed to daunt Robert Stevenson who loved
+    action and adventure and the scent of things romantic.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not only had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted,
+    the supply of oil must be maintained and the men fed, in the
+    same inaccessible and distant scenes, a whole service with its
+    routine ... had to be called out of nothing; and a new trade
+    (that of light-keeper) to be taught, recruited and
+    organized."</p>
+
+    <p>Bell Rock was only one of twenty lighthouses Robert
+    Stevenson helped to build, but it was by far the most difficult
+    one ... and even to-day, after it has been lighted for more
+    than a hundred years, it still remains unique&mdash;a monument
+    to his skill.</p>
+
+    <p>Bell Rock was practically a reef completely submerged at
+    full tide and only a few feet of its crest visible at low
+    water. To raise a tower on it meant placing a foundation under
+    water, a new and perilous experiment.</p>
+
+    <p>"Work upon the rock in the earliest stages was confined to
+    the calmest days of the summer season, when the tides were
+    lowest, the water smoothest, and the wind in its calmest mood.
+    Under such conditions the men were able to stay on the site for
+    about five hours....</p>
+
+    <p>"One distinct drawback was the necessity to establish a
+    depot some distance from the erecting site. Those were the days
+    before steam navigation, and the capricious sailing craft
+    offered the only means of maintaining communication between
+    rock and shore, and for the conveyance of men and materials to
+    and fro....</p>
+
+    <p>"A temporary beacon was placed on the reef, while adjacent
+    to the site selected for the tower a smith's forge was made
+    fast, so as to withstand the dragging motion of the waves when
+    the rock was submerged. The men were housed on the
+    <i>Smeaton</i>, which, during the spells of work on the rock,
+    rode at anchor a short distance away in deep water."
+       <a name="FNanchor__2"
+       id="FNanchor__2"></a><a href="#Footnote__2"
+       class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+    <p>Once the engineers were all but lost when the <i>Smeaton</i>
+    slipped her moorings and left them stranded on the rock.</p>
+
+    <p>In spite of all the obstacles, the work was completed at the
+    end of two years and the light was shown for the first time
+    February 1, 1811.</p>
+
+    <p>"I found Robert Stevenson an appreciative and intelligent
+    companion," writes Sir Walter Scott in his journal, speaking of
+    a cruise he made among the islands of Scotland with a party of
+    engineers. The notes made by him on this trip were used
+    afterward in his two stories, "The Pirate" and "Lord of the
+    Isles."</p>
+
+    <p>"My grandfather was king in the service to his finger-tips,"
+    wrote Louis Stevenson. "All should go his way, from the
+    principal light-keeper's coat to the assistant's fender, from
+    the gravel in the garden walks to the bad smell in the kitchen,
+    or the oil spots on the storeroom floor. It might be thought
+    there was nothing more calculated to awaken men's resentment,
+    and yet his rule was not more thorough than it was beneficent.
+    His thought for the keepers was continual.... When a keeper was
+    sick, he lent him his horse and sent him mutton and brandy from
+    the ship.... They dwelt, many of them, in uninhabited isles or
+    desert forelands, totally cut off from shops.</p>
+
+    <p>"No servant of the Northern Lights came to Edinburgh but he
+    was entertained at Baxter Place. There at his own table my
+    grandfather sat down delightedly with his broad-spoken,
+    homespun officers."</p>
+
+    <p>As he grew old his "medicine and delight" was his annual
+    trip among his lighthouses, but at length there came a time
+    when this joy was taken away from him and there came "the end
+    of all his cruising; the knowledge that he had looked the last
+    on Sunburgh, and the wild crags of Skye, and the Sound of Mull;
+    that he was never again to hear the surf break in Clashcarnock;
+    never again to see lighthouse after lighthouse (all younger
+    than himself, and the more, part of his own device) open in the
+    hour of dusk their flower of fire, or the topaz and ruby
+    interchange on the summit of Bell Rock."</p>
+
+    <p>Throughout the rank and file of his men he was adored. "I
+    have spoken with many who knew him; I was his grandson, and
+    their words may very well have been words of flattery; but
+    there was one thing that could not be affected, and that was
+    the look that came over their faces at the name of Robert
+    Stevenson."</p>
+
+    <p>Of his family of thirteen children, three of his sons became
+    engineers. Thomas Stevenson, the father of Robert Louis, like
+    the others of his family, contributed largely to lighthouse
+    building and harbor improvement, serving under his older
+    brother, Allen, in building the Skerryvore, one of the most
+    famous deep-sea lights erected on a treacherous reef off the
+    west coast where, for more than forty years, one wreck after
+    another had occurred.</p>
+
+    <p>"From the navigator's point of view, the danger of this spot
+    lay chiefly in the fact that it was so widely scattered. The
+    ridge runs like a broken backbone for a distance of some eight
+    miles.... In rough weather the whole of the rocks are covered,
+    and the waves, beating heavily on the mass, convert the scene
+    into one of indescribable tumult....</p>
+
+    <p>"There was only one point where a tower could be placed, and
+    this was so exposed that the safe handling of men and material
+    constituted a grave responsibility."</p>
+
+    <p>It was necessary to erect a tower one hundred and thirty
+    feet high; "the loftiest and weightiest work of its character
+    that had ever been contemplated up to this time....</p>
+
+    <p>"The Atlantic swell, which rendered landing on the ridge
+    precarious and hazardous, did not permit the men to be housed
+    upon a floating home, as had been the practice in the early
+    days of the Bell Rock tower. In order to permit the work to go
+    forward as uninterruptedly as the sea would allow, a peculiar
+    barrack was erected. It was a house on stilts, the legs being
+    sunk firmly into the rock, with the living quarters perched
+    some fifty feet up in the air.</p>
+
+    <p>"Residence in this tower was eerie. The men climbed the
+    ladder and entered a small room, which served the purposes of
+    kitchen, living-room, and parlor....</p>
+
+    <p>"When a storm was raging, the waves, as they combed over the
+    rock, shook the legs violently and scurried under the floor in
+    seething foam. Now and again a roller, rising higher than its
+    fellows, broke upon the rock and sent a mass of water against
+    the flooring to hammer at the door. Above the living-room were
+    the sleeping quarters, high and dry, save when a shower of
+    spray fell upon the roof and walls like heavy hail.... The men,
+    however, were not perturbed. Sleeping, even under such
+    conditions, was far preferable to doubtful rest in a bunk upon
+    an attendant vessel, rolling and pitching with the motion of
+    the sea. They had had a surfeit of such experience ... while
+    the barrack was under erection.</p>
+
+    <p>"For two years it withstood the seas without incident, and
+    the engineer and men came to regard the eyrie as safe as a
+    house on shore. But one night the little colony received a
+    shock. The angry Atlantic got one or two of its trip-hammer
+    blows well home, and smashed the structure to fragments.
+    Fortunately, at the time it was untenanted."</p>
+
+    <p>No time was lost in rebuilding the barrack and this time it
+    withstood all tests until it was torn down after Skerryvore was
+    finished.</p>
+
+    <p>"While the foundations were being prepared, and until the
+    barrack was constructed, the men ran other terrible risks every
+    morning and night landing upon and leaving the polished surface
+    of the reef. Five months during the summer was the working
+    season, but even then many days and weeks were often lost owing
+    to the swell being too great to permit the rowing boat to come
+    alongside. The engineer relates that the work was 'a good
+    lesson in the school of patience,' because the delays were
+    frequent and galling, while every storm which got up and
+    expended its rage upon the reef left its mark indelibly among
+    the engineer's stock in trade. Cranes and other materials were
+    swept away as if they were corks; lashings, no matter how
+    strong, were snapped like pack-threads.</p>
+
+    <p>"Probably the worst experience was when the men on the rock
+    were weather-bound for seven weeks during one season.... Their
+    provisions sank to a very low level, they ran short of fuel,
+    their sodden clothing was worn to rags....</p>
+
+    <p>"Six years were occupied in the completion of the work, and,
+    as may be imagined, the final touches were welcomed with
+    thankfulness by those who had been concerned in the
+    enterprise."</p>
+
+    <p>It was in meteorological researches and illumination of
+    lighthouses, however, that Thomas Stevenson did his greatest
+    work. It was he who brought to perfection the revolving light
+    now so generally used.</p>
+
+    <p>In spite of this and other valuable inventions his name has
+    remained little known, owing to the fact that none of his
+    inventions were ever patented. The Stevensons believed that,
+    holding government appointments, any original work they did
+    belonged to the nation. "A patent not only brings in money but
+    spreads reputation," writes his son, "and my father's
+    instruments enter anonymously into a hundred light rooms and
+    are passed anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the
+    least considerable patent would stand out and tell its author's
+    story."</p>
+
+    <p>He was beloved among a wide circle of friends and the esteem
+    of those in his profession was shown when in 1884 they chose
+    him for president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. To the
+    general public, however, he remained unknown in spite of the
+    fact that "His lights were in all parts of the world guiding
+    the mariners."</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_II"
+       id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+    <h3>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h3>
+
+    <p class="poem">"As from the house your mother sees
+    <br>
+     You playing round the garden trees,
+    <br>
+     So you may see, if you will look
+    <br>
+     Through the window of this book,
+    <br>
+     Another child, far, far away,
+    <br>
+     And in another garden, play."</p>
+
+    <p class="poem"><span style=
+    "text-align: center;">&mdash;"Child's Garden of
+    Verses."</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born at No. 8 Howard
+    Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1850.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1852 the family moved from Howard Place to Inverleith
+    Terrace, and two years later to No. 17 Heriot Row, which
+    remained their home for many years.</p>
+
+    <p>As a child Louis was very delicate and often ill, for years
+    hardly a winter passed that he did not spend many days in
+    bed.</p>
+
+    <p>Edinburgh in winter is extremely damp and he tells us: "Many
+    winters I never crossed the threshold, but used to lie on my
+    face on the nursery floor, chalking or painting in water-colors
+    the pictures in the illustrated newspapers; or sit up in bed
+    with a little shawl pinned about my shoulders, to play with
+    bricks or what not."</p>
+
+    <p>The diverting history of "Hop-O'-My-Thumb" and the
+    "Seven-League Boots," "Little Arthur's History of England,"
+    "Peter Parley's Historical Tales," and "Harry's Ladder to
+    Learning" were books which he delighted to pore over and their
+    pages bore many traces of his skill with the pencil and
+    paint-brush.</p>
+
+    <p>Those who have read the "Child's Garden of Verses" already
+    know the doings of his childish days, for although those rhymes
+    were not written until he was a grown man he was "one of the
+    few who do not forget their own lives" and "through the windows
+    of this book" gives us a vivid and living picture of the boy
+    who dwelt so much in a world of his own with his quaint
+    thoughts.</p>
+
+    <p>If his body was frail his spirit was strong and his power of
+    imagination so great that he cheered himself through many a
+    weary day by playing he was "captain of a tidy little ship," a
+    soldier, a fierce pirate, an Indian chief, or an explorer in
+    foreign lands. Miles he travelled in his little bed.</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"I have just to shut my eyes,
+    <br>
+     To go sailing through the skies&mdash;
+    <br>
+     To go sailing far away
+    <br>
+     To the pleasant Land of Play"</p>
+
+    <p>he says.</p><a name="image002"
+          id="image002"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:454px;">
+        <img src="images/image002.jpg"
+             width="454"
+             height="669"
+             alt=
+             "No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson's birthplace">
+             <span class="caption">No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh,
+             Stevenson's birthplace</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>In spite of his power for amusing himself, days like these
+    would have gone far harder had it not been for two devoted
+    people, his mother and his nurse, Alison Cunningham or "Cummie"
+    as he called her. His mother was devoted to him in every way
+    and encouraged his love for reading and story-making. She kept
+    a diary of his progress from day to day, and treasured every
+    picture he drew or scrap he wrote. Cummie came to him as a
+    Torryburn lassie when he was eighteen months old and was like a
+    second mother to him. She not only cared for his bodily
+    comforts but was his friend and comrade as well. She sang for
+    him, danced for him, spun fine tales of pirates and smugglers,
+    and read to him so dramatically that his mind was fired then
+    and there with a longing for travel and adventure which he
+    never lost. When they took their walks through the streets
+    together Cummie had many stories to tell him of Scotland and
+    Edinburgh in the old days. For Edinburgh is a wonderful old
+    city with a wonderful history full of tales of stirring
+    adventure and romance. "For centuries it was a capitol thatched
+    with heather and more than once, in the evil days of English
+    invasion, it has gone up in flames to Heaven, a beacon to ships
+    at sea.... It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not
+    only on Greenside or by the King's Stables, where set
+    tournaments were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the
+    authority of the royal presence, but in every alley where there
+    was room to cross swords.... In the town, in one of those
+    little shops plastered like so many swallows' nests among the
+    buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat James
+    VI. would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the
+    goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down
+    on the castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad
+    and dismal fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long
+    exposure on the moors, sat day and night 'with tearful
+    psalms.'... In the Grassmarket, stiff-necked covenanting heroes
+    offered up the often unnecessary, but not less honorable,
+    sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent farewell to sun,
+    moon and stars and earthly friendships, or died silent to the
+    roll of the drums. Down by yon outlet rode Grahame of
+    Claverhouse and his thirty dragoons, with the town beating to
+    arms behind their horses' tails&mdash;a sorry handful thus
+    riding for their lives, but with a man at their head who was to
+    return in a different temper, make a bold dash that staggered
+    Scotland, and die happily in the thick of the fight....</p>
+
+    <p>"The palace of Holyrood is a house of many memories....
+    Great people of yore, kings and queens, buffoons and grave
+    ambassadors played their stately farce for centuries in
+    Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing has lasted deep into
+    the night, murder has been done in its chambers. There Prince
+    Charlie held his phantom levées and in a very gallant manner
+    represented a fallen dynasty for some hours....</p>
+
+    <p>"There is an old story of the subterranean passage between
+    the castle and Holyrood and a bold Highland piper who
+    volunteered to explore its windings. He made his entrance by
+    the upper end, playing a strathspey; the curious footed it
+    after him down the street, following his descent by the sound
+    of the chanter from below; until all of a sudden, about the
+    level of St. Giles the music came abruptly to an end, and the
+    people in the street stood at fault with hands uplifted.
+    Whether he choked with gases, or perished in a quag, or was
+    removed bodily by the Evil One, remains a point of doubt, but
+    the piper has never again been seen or heard of from that day
+    to this. Perhaps he wandered down into the land of Thomas the
+    Rhymer, and some day, when it is least expected, may take a
+    thought to revisit the sunlit upper world. That will be a
+    strange moment for the cabmen on the stands beside St. Giles,
+    when they hear the crone of his pipes reascending from the
+    earth below their horses' feet."</p>
+
+    <p>In Edinburgh to-day there are armed men and cannon in the
+    castle high up on the great rock above you: "You may see the
+    troops marshalled on the high parade, and at night after the
+    early winter evenfall and in the morning before the laggard
+    winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sounds
+    of drums and bugles." <a name="FNanchor__3"
+       id="FNanchor__3"></a><a href="#Footnote__3"
+       class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+    <p>Long before Louis could write he made up verses and stories
+    for himself, and Cummie wrote them down for him. "I thought
+    they were rare nonsense then," she said, little dreaming that
+    these same bits of "rare nonsense" were the beginnings of what
+    was to make "her boy" famous across two seas in years to
+    come.</p>
+
+    <p>He writes of her when speaking of long nights he lay awake
+    unable to sleep because of a troublesome cough: "How well I
+    remember her lifting me out of bed, carrying me to the window
+    and showing me one or two lit windows up in Queen Street across
+    the dark belt of garden, where also, we told each other, there
+    might be sick little boys and their nurses waiting, like us,
+    for the morning."</p>
+
+    <p>Her devotion to him had its reward in the love he gave her
+    all his life. One of his early essays written when he was
+    twenty and published in the <i>Juvenilia</i> was called
+    "Nurses." Fifteen years later came the publication of the
+    "Child's Garden of Verses" with a splendid tribute to her as a
+    dedication. He sent her copies of all his books, wrote letters
+    to her, and invited her to visit him. She herself tells that
+    the last time she ever saw him he said to her, "before a room
+    full of people, 'It's <i>you</i> that gave me a passion for the
+    drama, Cummie,' 'Me, Master Lou,' I said, 'I never put foot
+    inside a playhouse in my life.' 'Ay, woman,' said he, 'but it
+    was the good dramatic way ye had of reciting the hymns.'"</p>
+
+    <p>When he was six years old his Uncle David offered a Bible
+    picture-book as a prize to the nephews who could write the best
+    history of Moses.</p>
+
+    <p>This was Louis's first real literary attempt. He was not
+    able to write himself, but dictated to his mother and
+    illustrated the story and its cover with pictures which he
+    designed and painted himself.</p>
+
+    <p>He won the prize and from that time, his mother says, "it
+    was the desire of his heart to be an author."</p>
+
+    <p>During the winter of 1856-57 his favorite cousin, Robert
+    Alan Mowbray Stevenson, usually called Bob, visited them; a
+    great treat for Louis, not only because his ill health kept him
+    from making many companions of his own age, but because Bob
+    loved many of the same things he did and to "make believe" was
+    as much a part of his life as Louis's. Many fine games they had
+    together; built toy theatres, the scenery and characters for
+    which they bought for a "penny plain and twopence colored," and
+    were never tired of dressing up. One of their chief delights,
+    he says, was in "rival kingdoms of our own
+    invention&mdash;Nosingtonia and Encyclopædia, of which we were
+    perpetually drawing maps." Even the eating of porridge at
+    breakfast became a game. Bob ate his with sugar and said it was
+    an island covered with snow with here a mountain and there a
+    valley; while Louis's was an island flooded by milk which
+    gradually disappeared bit by bit.</p>
+
+    <p>In the spring and summer his mother took him for short trips
+    to the watering-places near Edinburgh. But the spot unlike all
+    others for a real visit was at Colinton Manse, the home of his
+    grandfather, the Reverend Lewis Balfour, at Colinton, on the
+    Water of Leith, five miles southwest of Edinburgh. Here he
+    spent glorious days. Not only was there the house and garden,
+    both rare spots for one of an exploring turn of mind, but, best
+    of all, there were the numerous cousins of his own age sent out
+    from India, where their parents were, to be nursed and educated
+    under the loving eye of Aunt Jane Balfour, for whom he
+    wrote:</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"Chief of our aunts&mdash;not only I,
+    <br>
+     But all the dozen nurslings cry&mdash;
+    <br>
+     What did the other children do?
+    <br>
+     And what was childhood, wanting you?"</p>
+    <br>
+     <a name="image003"
+          id="image003"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image003.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="400"
+             alt="Colinton Manse"> <span class="caption">Colinton Manse</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>If Louis lacked brothers and sisters he had no dearth of
+    cousins, fifty in all they numbered, many of them near his own
+    age. Alan Stevenson, Henrietta and Willie Traquair seem to have
+    been his favorite chums at Colinton.</p>
+
+    <p>Of his grandfather Balfour he says: "We children admired
+    him, partly for his beautiful face and silver hair ... partly
+    for the solemn light in which we beheld him once a week, the
+    observed of all observers in the pulpit. But his strictness and
+    distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old age, slow blood, and
+    settled habits, oppressed us with a kind of terror. When not
+    abroad, he sat much alone writing sermons or letters to his
+    scattered family.... The study had a redeeming grace in many
+    Indian pictures gaudily colored and dear to young eyes.... When
+    I was once sent in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went,
+    quaking indeed with fear, but at the same time glowing with
+    hope that, if I said it well, he might reward me with an Indian
+    picture."</p>
+
+    <p>"There were two ways of entering the Manse garden," he says,
+    "one the two-winged gate that admitted the old phaeton and the
+    other a door for pedestrians on the side next the kirk.... On
+    the left hand were the stables, coach-houses and washing
+    houses, clustered around a small, paved court.... Once past the
+    stable you were fairly within the garden. On summer afternoons
+    the sloping lawn was literally <i>steeped</i> in
+    sunshine....</p>
+
+    <p>"The wall of the church faces the manse, but the church yard
+    is on a level with the top of the wall ... and the tombstones
+    are visible from the enclosure of the manse.... Under the
+    retaining wall was a somewhat dark pathway, extending from the
+    stable to the far end of the garden, and called the 'witches'
+    walk' from a game we used to play in it.... Even out of the
+    'witches' walk' you saw the Manse facing toward you, with its
+    back to the river and the wooded bank, and the bright
+    flower-plots and stretches of comfortable vegetables in front
+    and on each side of it; flower plots and vegetable borders, by
+    the way, on which it was almost death to set foot, and about
+    which we held a curious belief,&mdash;namely, that my
+    grandfather went round and measured any footprints that he saw,
+    to compare the measurement at night with the boots put out for
+    brushing; to avoid which we were accustomed, by a strategic
+    movement of the foot to make the mark longer....</p>
+
+    <p>"So much for the garden; now follow me into the house. On
+    entering the door you had before you a stone paved lobby....
+    There stood a case of foreign birds, two or three marble
+    deities from India and a lily of the Nile in a pot, and at the
+    far end the stairs shut in the view. With how many games of
+    'tig' or brick-building in the forenoon is the long low dining
+    room connected in my mind! The storeroom was a most voluptuous
+    place, with its piles of biscuit boxes and spice tins, the rack
+    for buttered eggs, the little window that let in the sunshine
+    and the flickering shadows of leaves, and the strong sweet odor
+    of everything that pleaseth the taste of men....</p>
+
+    <p>"Opposite the study was the parlor, a small room crammed
+    full of furniture and covered with portraits, with a cabinet at
+    the side full of foreign curiosities, and a sort of anatomical
+    trophy on the top. During a grand cleaning of the apartment I
+    remember all the furniture was ranged on a circular grass plot
+    between the churchyard and the house. It was a lovely still
+    summer evening, and I stayed out, climbing among the chairs and
+    sofas. Falling on a large bone or skull, I asked what it was.
+    Part of an albatross, auntie told me. 'What is an albatross?' I
+    asked, and then she described to me this great bird nearly as
+    big as a house, that you saw out miles away from any land,
+    sleeping above the vast and desolate ocean. She told me that
+    the <i>Ancient Mariner</i> was all about one; and quoted with
+    great <i>verve</i> (she had a duster in her hand, I
+    recollect)&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">'With my crossbow
+    <br>
+     I shot the albatross.'</p>
+
+    <p>... Willie had a crossbow, but up to this date I had never
+    envied him its possession. After this, however, it became one
+    of the objects of my life."</p>
+
+    <p>With many playmates, free to roam and romp as he chose, his
+    illness forgotten, it is no wonder he says he felt as if he led
+    two lives, one belonging to Edinburgh and one to the country,
+    and that Colinton ever remained an enchanted spot to which it
+    was always hard to say good-by.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"
+       id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+    <h3>THE LANTERN BEARER</h3>
+
+    <p class="poem">"Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
+    <br>
+     In school, some graduate of the field or street,
+    <br>
+     Who shall become a master of the art,
+    <br>
+     An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
+    <br>
+     Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
+    <br>
+     For lands not yet laid down on any chart."</p>
+
+    <p class="poem"><span style=
+    "text-align: center;">&mdash;L<font size=
+    "-1">ONGFELLOW</font>.</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>School days began for Louis in 1859, but were continually
+    interrupted by illness, travel, and change of school. His
+    father did not believe in forcing him to study; so he roamed
+    through school according to his own sweet will, attending
+    classes where he cared to, interesting himself in the subjects
+    that appealed to him&mdash;Latin, French, and
+    mathematics&mdash;neglecting the others and bringing home no
+    prizes, to Cummie's distress.</p>
+
+    <p>Certain books were his prime favorites at this time.
+    "Robinson Crusoe," he says, "and some of the books of Mayne
+    Reid and a book called Paul Blake&mdash;Swiss Family Robinson
+    also. At these I played, conjured up their scenes and delighted
+    to hear them rehearsed to seventy times seven.</p>
+
+    <p>"My father's library was a spot of some austerity; the
+    proceedings of learned societies, cyclopædias, physical science
+    and above all, optics held the chief place upon the shelves,
+    and it was only in holes and corners that anything legible
+    existed as if by accident. Parents' Assistant, Rob Roy,
+    Waverley and Guy Mannering, Pilgrim's Progress, Voyages of
+    Capt. Woods Rogers, Ainsworth's Tower of London and four old
+    volumes of Punch&mdash;these were among the chief
+    exceptions.</p>
+
+    <p>"In these latter which made for years the chief of my diet,
+    I very early fell in love (almost as soon as I could spell)
+    with the Snob Papers. I knew them almost by heart ... and I
+    remember my surprise when I found long afterward that they were
+    famous, and signed with a famous name; to me, as I read and
+    admired them, they were the works of Mr. Punch."</p>
+
+    <p>Two old Bibles interested him particularly. They had
+    belonged to his grandfather Stevenson and contained many marked
+    passages and notes telling how they had been read aboard
+    lighthouse tenders and on tours of inspection among the
+    islands.</p>
+
+    <p>After he was thirteen his health was greatly improved and he
+    was able to enjoy the comradeship of other lads, though he
+    never cared greatly for sports. He was the leader of a number
+    of boys who used to go about playing tricks on the
+    neighbors&mdash;"tapping on their windows after nightfall, and
+    all manner of wild freaks."</p>
+
+    <p>"Crusoing" was a favorite game and its name stood for all
+    picnicking in the open air, building bonfires and cooking
+    apples, but the crowning sport of all was "Lantern Bearing," a
+    game invented by himself and shared by a dozen of his
+    cronies.</p>
+
+    <p>"Toward the end of September," he says, "when school time
+    was drawing near and the nights were already black, we would
+    begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a
+    tin bull's-eye lantern.... We wore them buckled to the waist
+    upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigor of the
+    game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled noxiously of blistered
+    tin; they never burned aright, though they would always burn
+    our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them merely
+    fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat
+    asked for nothing more.</p>
+
+    <p>"When two of these asses met there would be an anxious,
+    'Have you your lantern?' and a gratified 'Yes,' That was the
+    shibboleth, and a very needful one too; for as it was the rule
+    to keep our glory contained, none could recognize a
+    lantern-bearer, unless like a polecat, by the smell.</p>
+
+    <p>"The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the
+    black night, the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a ray
+    escaping whether to conduct your footsteps or make your glory
+    public, a mere pillar of darkness in the dark, and all the
+    while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know
+    you had a bull's-eye at your belt and exult and sing over the
+    knowledge."</p>
+
+    <p>In later years one of the Lantern Bearers describes Louis as
+    he was then. "A slender, long legged boy in pepper and salt
+    tweeds, with an undescribable influence that forced us to
+    include him in our play as a looker on, critic and slave
+    driver.... No one had the remotest intention of competing with
+    R.L.S. in story making, and his tales, had we known it, were
+    such as the world would listen to in silence and wonder."</p>
+
+    <p>At home and at his last school he was always starting
+    magazines. The stories were illustrated with much color and the
+    magazines circulated among the boys for a penny a reading. One
+    was called <i>The Sunbeam Magazine</i>, an illustrated
+    miscellany of fact, fiction, and fun, and another <i>The School
+    Boy Magazine</i>. The latter contained four stories and its
+    readers must have been hard to satisfy if they did not have
+    their fill of horrors&mdash;"regular crawlers," Louis called
+    them. In the first tale, "The Adventures of Jan Van Steen," the
+    hero is left hidden in a boiler under which a fire is lit. The
+    second is a "Ghost Story" of robbers in a deserted castle....
+    The third is called, "by curious anticipation of a story he was
+    to write later on, 'The Wreckers.'"</p>
+
+    <p>Numerous plays and novels he began but they eventually found
+    their fate in the trash basket. An exception to this was a
+    small green pamphlet of twenty pages called "The Pentland
+    Rising, a page of history, 1666." It was published through his
+    father's interest on the two-hundredth anniversary of the fight
+    at Rullion Green. This event in Scotland's history had been
+    impressed on his mind by the numerous stories. Cummie had told
+    him of the Covenanters and the fact that they had spent the
+    night before their defeat in the town of Colinton.</p>
+
+    <p>From the time he was a little chap, balancing on the limb of
+    an apple-tree in the Colinton garden trying to see what kind of
+    a world lay beyond the garden wall, Louis had had a longing to
+    travel and see sights. This began to find satisfaction now.</p>
+
+    <p>His father took him on a trip around the coast of Fife,
+    visiting the harbor lights. The little towns along the coast
+    were already familiar to him by the stories of the past.
+    Dunfermline, where, according to the ballad, Scotland's king
+    once "sat in his tower drinking blood-red wine"; Kerkcaldy,
+    where the witches used to sink "tall ships and honest mariners
+    in the North Sea"; and "Wemyss with its bat-haunted caves,
+    where the Chevalier Johnstone on his flight from Colloden
+    passed a night of superstitious terrors."</p>
+
+    <p>Later the family made a trip to the English Lakes and in the
+    winter of the same year to the south of France, where they
+    stayed two months, then making a tour through Italy and
+    Switzerland. The following Christmas found Louis and his mother
+    again in Mentone, where they stayed until spring.</p>
+
+    <p>French was one of his favorite studies at school, and now
+    after a few months among French people he was able to speak
+    fluently. Indeed, in after life he was often mistaken for a
+    Frenchman.</p>
+
+    <p>His French teacher on his second visit to Mentone gave him
+    no regular lessons, but "merely talked to him in French,
+    teaching him piquet and card tricks, introducing him to various
+    French people and taking him to concerts and other places; so,
+    his mother remarks, like Louis' other teachers at home I think
+    they found it pleasanter to talk to him then to teach him."</p>
+
+    <p>After their return to Edinburgh came the time when, his
+    school days finished, Louis must make up his mind what his
+    career is to be and train himself for it.</p>
+
+    <p>Even then he knew what he wanted to do was to write. He had
+    fitted up a room on the top floor at Heriot Row as a study and
+    spent hours there covering paper with stories or trying to
+    describe in the very best way scenes which had impressed him.
+    Most of these were discarded when finished. "I liked doing them
+    indeed," he said, "but when done I could see they were
+    rubbish." He never doubted, however, that some day his attempts
+    would prove worth while, if he could only devote his time to
+    learning to write and write well.</p>
+
+    <p>His father, he knew, had different plans for him, however.
+    Of course, Louis would follow in his footsteps and be the sixth
+    Stevenson to hold a place on the Board of Northern Lights. So,
+    although he had little heart in the work, he entered the
+    University of Edinburgh and spent the next three and a half
+    years studying for a science degree.</p>
+
+    <p>The summer of 1868 he was sent with an engineering party to
+    Anstruther, on the coast, where a breakwater was being built.
+    There he had his first opportunity of seeing some of the
+    practical side of engineering. It was rough work, but he
+    enjoyed it. Later he spent three weeks on Earraid Island, off
+    Mull, a place which left a strong impression on his mind and
+    figured afterward as the spot where David Balfour was
+    shipwrecked.</p>
+
+    <p>Among the experiences at that time which pleased him most
+    was a chance to descend in a diver's dress to the foundation of
+    the harbor they were building. In his essays, "Random
+    Memories," he tells of the "dizzy muddleheaded joy" he had in
+    his surroundings, swaying like a reed, and grabbing at the fish
+    which darted past him.</p>
+
+    <p>In writing afterward of these years he says: "What I gleaned
+    I am sure I do not know, but indeed I had already my own
+    private determination to be an author ... though I haunted the
+    breakwater by day, and even loved the place for the sake of the
+    sunshine, the thrilling sea-side air, the wash of the waves on
+    the sea face, the green glimmer of the diver's helmets far
+    below.... My own genuine occupation lay elsewhere and my only
+    industry was in the hours when I was not on duty. I lodged with
+    a certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade, and there as soon
+    as dinner was despatched ... drew my chair to the table and
+    proceeded to pour forth literature.</p>
+
+    <p>"I wish to speak with sympathy of my education as an
+    engineer. It takes a man into the open air; keeps him hanging
+    about harbor sides, the richest form of idling; it carries him
+    to wild islands; it gives him a taste of the genial danger of
+    the sea ... and when it has done so it carries him back and
+    shuts him in an office. From the roaring skerry and the wet
+    thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk,
+    and with a memory full of ships and seas and perilous headlands
+    and shining pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the
+    pretty niceties of drawing or measure his inaccurate mind with
+    several pages of consecutive figures."</p>
+
+    <p>"The roaring skerry and the tossing boat," appealed to him
+    as they had to his grandfather before him, but they did not
+    balance his dislike for the "office and the stool" or make him
+    willing to devote his time and energy to working for them, so
+    his university record was very poor. "No one ever played the
+    truant with more deliberate care," he says, "and no one ever
+    had more certificates (of attendance) for less education."</p>
+
+    <p>One thing that he gained from his days at the university was
+    the friendship of Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He was fifteen
+    years older than Louis, but they had many common interests and
+    the professor had much good influence over him. He was one of
+    the first to see promise in his writing and encouraged him to
+    go on with it.</p>
+
+    <p>Both the professor and Mrs. Jenkin were much interested in
+    dramatics and each year brought a group of friends together at
+    their house for private theatricals. Stevenson was a constant
+    visitor at their home, joining heartily in these plays and
+    looking forward to them, although he never took any very
+    important part.</p>
+
+    <p>After Professor Jenkin's death Stevenson wrote his
+    biography, and says it was a "mingled pain and pleasure to dig
+    into the past of a dead friend, and find him, at every
+    spadeful, shine brighter."</p>
+
+    <p>About this time Thomas Stevenson bought Swanston Cottage in
+    the Pentland Hills, about five miles from Edinburgh, and for
+    the next fourteen years the family spent their summers there,
+    and Louis often went out in winter as well. It ever remained
+    one of his favorite spots and with Colinton stood out as a
+    place that meant much in his life.</p><a name="image004"
+          id="image004"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image004.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="376"
+             alt="Swanston Cottage"> <span class="caption">Swanston
+             Cottage</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>These years saw great change in him; from a frank and happy
+    child he had grown into a lonely, moody boy making few friends
+    and shunning the social life that his father's position in
+    Edinburgh offered him. He describes himself as a "lean, ugly,
+    unpopular student," but those who knew him never applied the
+    term "ugly" to him at any time.</p>
+
+    <p>At Swanston he explored the hills alone and grew to know
+    them so well that the Pentland country ever remained vividly in
+    his memory and found its way into many of his stories, notably
+    "St. Ives," where he describes Swanston as it was when they
+    first made it their summer home.</p>
+
+    <p>Many solitary winter evenings he spent there rereading his
+    favorite novels, particularly Dumas's "Vicomte de Bragelonne,"
+    which always pleased him. "Shakespeare has served me best," he
+    said. "Few living friends have had upon me an influence so
+    strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. Perhaps my dearest and
+    best friend outside of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan, the elderly
+    D'Artagnan of the 'Vicomte de Bragelonne.'</p>
+
+    <p>"I would return in the early night from one of my patrols
+    with the shepherd, a friendly face would meet me in the door, a
+    friendly retriever scurry up stairs to fetch my slippers, and I
+    would sit down with the Vicomte for a long, silent, solitary
+    lamp-lit evening by the fire."</p>
+
+    <p>At Swanston he first began to really write, "bad poetry," he
+    says, and during his solitary rambles fought with certain
+    problems that perplexed him.</p>
+
+    <p>Here he made the acquaintance of the Scotch gardener, Robert
+    Young, and John Todd, the "Roaring Shepherd, the oldest herd on
+    the Pentlands," whom he accompanied on his rounds with the
+    sheep, listening to his tales told in broad Scotch of the
+    highland shepherds in the old days when "he himself often
+    marched flocks into England, sleeping on the hillsides with his
+    caravan; and by his account it was rough business not without
+    danger. The drove roads lay apart from habitation; the drivers
+    met in the wilderness, as to-day the deep sea fishers meet off
+    the banks in the solitude of the Atlantic."</p>
+
+    <p>All this time Louis was idling through the university,
+    knowing that in the end he would make nothing of himself as an
+    engineer and dreading to confess it to his father. At length,
+    however, his failure in his studies came to Thomas Stevenson's
+    attention, and, on being questioned about it "one dreadful day"
+    as they were walking together, the boy frankly admitted that
+    his heart was not with the work and he cared for nothing but to
+    be able to write.</p>
+
+    <p>While at school his father had encouraged him to follow his
+    own bent in his studies and reading, but when it came to the
+    point of choosing his life-work, there ought to be no question
+    of doubt. The only natural thing for Louis to do was to carry
+    on the great and splendid work that he himself had helped to
+    build up. That the boy should have other plans of his own
+    surprised and troubled him. Literature, he said, was no
+    profession, and thus far Louis had not done enough to prove he
+    had a claim for making it his career.</p>
+
+    <p>After much debate it was finally decided that he should give
+    up engineering, but should enter the law school and study to be
+    admitted to the bar. This would not only give him an
+    established profession, but leave him a little time to write as
+    well.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"
+       id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+    <h3>EDINBURGH DAYS</h3>
+
+    <p class="poem">"I am fevered with the sunset,
+    <br>
+     I am fretful with the bay,
+    <br>
+     For the wander-thirst is on me
+    <br>
+     And my soul is in Cathay.</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"There's a schooner in the offing,
+    <br>
+     With her topsails shot with fire,
+    <br>
+     And my heart has gone aboard her
+    <br>
+     For the island of Desire."</p>
+
+    <p class="poem"><span style=
+    "text-align: center;">&mdash;R<font size="-1">ICHARD</font>
+    H<font size="-1">OVEY</font>.</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>In spite of the fact that his law studies now left him an
+    opportunity for the work he wanted so much to do, Louis was far
+    from happy, for between his parents and himself, who had always
+    been the best of friends, there were many
+    misunderstandings.</p>
+
+    <p>Thomas Stevenson was bitterly disappointed that his only son
+    should choose to be what he called "an idler"&mdash;generous to
+    a fault and always out of money, dressing in a careless and
+    eccentric way, which both amused and annoyed his friends and
+    caused him to be ridiculed by strangers, preferring to roam the
+    streets of old Edinburgh scraping acquaintance with the
+    fishwives and dock hands, rather than staying at home and
+    mingling in the social circle to which his parents belonged.
+    But his father was still more troubled by certain independent
+    religious opinions, far different from those in which he had
+    been reared, that Louis adopted at this time.</p>
+
+    <p>How any good result could come from all this neither his
+    father nor mother could see, and with the loss of their
+    sympathy he was thrown upon himself and was lonely and
+    rebellious.</p>
+
+    <p>He longed to get away from it all, to quit Edinburgh with
+    its harsh climate, and often on his walks he leaned over the
+    great bridge that joins the New Town with the Old "and watched
+    the trains smoking out from under, and vanishing into the
+    tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies." He longed to go with
+    them "to that Somewhere-else of the imagination where all
+    troubles are supposed to end."</p>
+
+    <p>It was a comfort to him at this time to remember other
+    Scotchmen, Jeffries, Burns, Fergusson, Scott, Carlyle, and
+    others, who had roamed these same streets before him, not a few
+    of them fighting with the same problems he faced in their
+    struggle to win their ideal.</p>
+
+    <p>This unhappy time, this "Greensickness," as he called it,
+    came to an end, however, through the help of what Louis had
+    always secretly longed for&mdash;friends. Several whom he met
+    at this time influenced him, but first of them all he put his
+    cousin Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (Bob), who returned to
+    Edinburgh about this time from Paris, where he had been
+    studying art.</p>
+
+    <p>Louis says: "The mere return of Bob changed at once and
+    forever the course of my life; I can give you an idea of my
+    relief only by saying that I was at last able to breathe.... I
+    was done with the sullens for good.... I had got a friend to
+    laugh with."</p>
+
+    <p>Here at last was a companion who understood him and
+    sympathized with what he was trying to do. Since as children
+    they had made believe together in their rival kingdoms of
+    "Nosingtonia" and "Encyclopædia" they had had many traits and
+    tastes in common. They now began where they had left off and
+    proceeded to enjoy themselves once more by all sorts of wild
+    pranks and gay expeditions.</p>
+
+    <p>The Speculative Society became another great source of
+    pleasure. It was an old society and had numbered among its
+    members such men of note as Scott, Jeffrey, Robert Emmet, and
+    others. Once a week from November to March the "Spec," as it
+    was called, met in rooms in the University of Edinburgh. An
+    essay was read and debates followed with much hot discussion,
+    which delighted Stevenson. "Oh, I do think the Spec is about
+    the best thing in Edinburgh," he said enthusiastically.</p>
+
+    <p>Sir Walter Simpson, son of the famous doctor, Sir James
+    Simpson, who discovered chloroform, became another chum about
+    this time, and for the next ten years they were much together.
+    He likewise was studying law and was a near neighbor. The
+    Simpsons kept open house, and it was the custom for a group of
+    cronies to drop in at all hours of day and night. Louis was
+    among those who came oftenest, and Sir Walter's sister writes:
+    "He would frequently drop in to dinner with us, and of an
+    evening he had the run of the smoking room. After ten p.m. the
+    'open sesame' to our door was a rattle on the letter box and
+    Louis' fancy for the mysterious was whetted by this admittance
+    by secret sign, and we liked his special rat-a-tat for it was
+    the forerunner of an hour or two of talk."</p>
+
+    <p>They teased him about his queer clothes and laughed at some
+    of his wild ideas, but he seldom was angry at them for it and
+    never stayed away very long.</p>
+
+    <p>With them he often skated on Duddington Loch or canoed on
+    the Firth of Forth. One summer he and Sir Walter yachted off
+    the west coast of Scotland, and still another year, when
+    longing for further wandering possessed them, they made a trip
+    in canoes through the inland waters of Belgium from Antwerp to
+    Brussels, and then into France and by the rivers Sambre and
+    Oise nearly to Paris.</p>
+
+    <p>In the "Inland Voyage," where Stevenson describes this trip,
+    he calls Sir Walter and his canoe "Cigarette" while he was
+    "Arethusa." Adventures were plentiful, and they aroused much
+    curiosity among the dwellers on the banks, with whom they made
+    friends as they went along.</p>
+
+    <p>Once Arethusa was all but drowned, when his canoe was
+    overturned by the rapids; and on several occasions, when they
+    applied for a night's lodging, they were suspected of being
+    tramps or peddlers because of their bedraggled appearance.</p>
+
+    <p>One evening after a hard day's paddling in the rain they
+    landed tired, wet, and hungry at the little town of La Fère.
+    "The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate each
+    other on the prospect," says the Arethusa, "for we had been
+    told there was a capital inn at La Fère. Such a dinner as we
+    were going to eat. Such beds as we were going to sleep in, and
+    all the while the rain raining on homeless folk over all the
+    poplared country-side. It made our mouths water. The inn bore
+    the name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I
+    forget which. But I shall never forget how spacious and how
+    eminently comfortable it looked as we drew near.... A rattle of
+    many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great field of
+    tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like a
+    garden of things to eat.</p>
+
+    <p>"Into this ... you are now to suppose us making our
+    triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a
+    limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not believe I have a
+    sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort of glory,
+    but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cook-men,
+    who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with
+    surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady however; there
+    she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of
+    affairs. Her I asked politely&mdash;too politely, thinks the
+    Cigarette&mdash;if we could have beds, she surveying us coldly
+    from head to foot.</p>
+
+    <p>"'You will find beds in the suburb,' she remarked. 'We are
+    too busy for the like of you.'</p>
+
+    <p>"If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order
+    a bottle of wine I felt sure we could put things right, so I
+    said, 'If we can not sleep, we may at least dine,' and was for
+    depositing my bag.</p>
+
+    <p>"What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which
+    followed in the landlady's face! She made a run at us and
+    stamped her foot.</p>
+
+    <p>"'Out with you&mdash;out of the door!' she screeched.</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not know how it happened, but the next moment we were
+    out in the rain and darkness. This was not the first time that
+    I have been refused a lodging. Often and often I have planned
+    what I would do if such a misadventure happened to me again,
+    and nothing is easier to plan. But to put in execution, with a
+    heart boiling at the indignity? Try it, try it only once, and
+    tell me what you did."</p>
+
+    <p>Frequently on this trip the Arethusa's odd dress and foreign
+    looks led him to be taken for a spy. It was not long after the
+    Franco-Prussian war, and all sorts of rumors of suspicious
+    characters were afloat. Once he was actually arrested and
+    thrown into a dungeon because he could show no passport, and
+    the commissary refused to believe he was English and puzzled
+    his head over the scraps of notes and verses found in his
+    knapsack.</p>
+
+    <p>He was rescued by the faithful Cigarette, who finally
+    convinced the officials that they were British gentlemen
+    travelling in this odd way for pleasure, and the things in his
+    friend's bag were not plans against the government, but merely
+    scraps of poetry and notes on their travels that he liked to
+    amuse himself by making as they went along. <a name=
+    "FNanchor__4"
+       id="FNanchor__4"></a><a href="#Footnote__4"
+       class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+    <p>The canoe trips ended in a visit to the artists' colony at
+    Fontainebleau, where Bob Stevenson and a brother of Sir
+    Walter's were spending their summer. This place always had a
+    particular attraction for Louis and he spent many weeks both
+    there and at Grez near by during the next few years.</p>
+
+    <p>The free and easy life led by the artists suited him
+    exactly, although he found it hard to accomplish any work of
+    his own, but dreamed and planned all sorts of essays, verses,
+    and tales which he never wrote, while the others put their
+    pictures on canvas.</p>
+
+    <p>"I kept always two books in my pocket," he says, "one to
+    read and one to write in. As I walked my mind was busy fitting
+    what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside I
+    would either read, or a pencil and penny version-book would be
+    in my hand, to note down the features of the scene or
+    commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words."</p>
+
+    <p>If there was little work, to show after a stop at
+    Fontainebleau he had many memories of good-fellowship and some
+    of the friends he met there were to be the first to greet him
+    when he came to live on this side of the water.</p>
+
+    <p>While on their "Inland Voyage" the two canoemen had decided
+    that the most perfect mode of travel was by canal-boat. What
+    could be more delightful? "The chimney smokes for dinner as you
+    go along; the banks of the canal slowly unroll their scenery to
+    contemplative eyes; the barge floats by great forests and
+    through great cities with their public buildings and their
+    lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating home,
+    'travelling abed,' it is merely as if he were listening to
+    another man's story or turning the leaves of a picture book in
+    which he had no concern. He may take his afternoon walk in some
+    foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then come home
+    to dinner at his own fireside."</p>
+
+    <p>They grew most enthusiastic over the idea and told one
+    another how they would furnish their "water villa" with easy
+    chairs, pipes, and tobacco, and the bird and the dog should go
+    along too.</p>
+
+    <p>By the time Fontainebleau was reached they had planned trips
+    through all the canals of Europe. The idea took the artists'
+    fancy also, and a group of them actually purchased a canal-boat
+    called <i>The Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne</i>.
+    Furnishing a water villa, however, was more expensive than they
+    had foreseen, and she came to a sad end. "'The Eleven Thousand
+    Virgins of Cologne' rotted in the stream where she was
+    beautified ... she was never harnessed to the patient
+    track-horse. And when at length she was sold, by the indignant
+    carpenter of Moret, there was sold along with her the
+    <i>Arethusa</i> and the <i>Cigarette</i> ... now these historic
+    vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and alien
+    names."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1873 Stevenson planned to try for admission to the
+    English bar instead of the Scottish and went to London to take
+    the examination. But his health, which had been rather poor,
+    became worse, and on reaching London the doctor ordered him to
+    Mentone in the south of France, where he had been before as a
+    boy.</p>
+
+    <p>There he spent his days principally lying on his back in the
+    sun reading and playing with a little Russian girl with whom he
+    struck up a great friendship. His letters to his mother were
+    full of her sayings and doings. He was too ill to write much,
+    although one essay, "Ordered South," was the outcome of this
+    trip, the only piece of writing in which he ever posed as an
+    invalid or talked of his ill health.</p>
+
+    <p>At the end of two months he improved enough to return to
+    Edinburgh, but gave up the idea of the English bar. His illness
+    and absence seemed to have smoothed out some of the
+    difficulties at home, and after he returned things went happier
+    in every way.</p>
+
+    <p>On July 14, 1875, he passed his final law examinations, and
+    was admitted to the Scottish bar. He was now entitled to wear a
+    wig and gown, place a brass plate with his name upon the door
+    of 17 Heriot Row, and "have the fourth or fifth share of the
+    services of a clerk" whom it is said he didn't even know by
+    sight. For a few months he made some sort of a pretense at
+    practising, but it amounted to very little. Gradually he ceased
+    paying daily visits to the Parliament House to wait for a case,
+    but settled himself instead in the room on the top floor at
+    home and began to write, seriously this time&mdash;it was to be
+    his life-work from now on&mdash;and the law was forgotten.</p>
+
+    <p>His first essays were published in the <i>Cornhill
+    Magazine</i> and <i>The Portfolio</i> under the initials
+    R.L.S., which signature in time grew so familiar to his friends
+    and to those who admired his writings it became a second name
+    for him, and as R.L.S. he is often referred to.</p>
+
+    <p>He was free now to roam as he chose and spent much time in
+    Paris with Bob. The life there in the artists' quarter suited
+    him as well as it had at Fontainebleau. There, among other
+    American artists, he was associated with Mr. Will Low, a
+    painter, whom he saw much of when he came to New York.</p>
+
+    <p>One September he took a walking trip in the Cévenne
+    Mountains with no other companion than a little gray donkey,
+    Modestine, who carried his pack and tried his patience by turns
+    with her pace, which was "as much slower than a walk as a walk
+    is slower than a run," as he tells in the chronicle of the
+    trip.</p>
+
+    <p>A visit at Grez in 1876 was to mark a point in his life.
+    Heretofore the artists' colony had been composed only of men.
+    This year there were three new arrivals, Americans, a Mrs.
+    Osbourne and her young son and daughter. Their home in
+    California had been broken up and the mother had come to Grez
+    to paint for the summer.</p>
+
+    <p>Those who had been there for a number of years, R.L.S. among
+    them, looked on the newcomers as intruders and did not hesitate
+    to say so among themselves. Before the summer was over,
+    however, they were obliged to confess that the newcomers had
+    added to the charms of Grez, and Louis found in Mrs. Osbourne
+    another companion to add to his rapidly growing list.</p>
+
+    <p>When the artists scattered in the autumn and he returned to
+    Edinburgh and Mrs. Osbourne to California, he carried with him
+    the hope that some time in the future they should be
+    married.</p>
+
+    <p>For the next three years he worked hard. He published
+    numerous essays in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i> and his first
+    short stories, "A Lodging for the Night," "Will O' the Mill,"
+    and the "New Arabian Nights." These were followed by his first
+    books of travel, "An Inland Voyage," giving a faithful account
+    of the adventures of the <i>Arethusa</i> and the
+    <i>Cigarette</i>, and "Travels with a Donkey in the
+    Cévennes."</p>
+
+    <p>When the latter was published, Mr. Walter Crane made an
+    illustration for it showing R.L.S. under a tree in the
+    foreground in his sleeping-bag, smoking, while Modestine
+    contentedly crops grass by his side. Above him winds the path
+    he is to take on his journey, encouraging Modestine with her
+    burden to a livelier pace with his goad; receiving the blessing
+    of the good monks at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Snows;
+    stopping for a bite and sup at a wayside tavern; conversing
+    with a fellow traveller by the way; and finally disappearing
+    with the sunset over the brow of the hill.</p>
+
+    <p>Some time previous to all this he had written in a letter:
+    "Leslie Stephen, who was down here to lecture, called on me,
+    and took me up to see a poor fellow, a poet who writes for him,
+    and who has been eighteen months in our Infirmary, and may be
+    for all I know eighteen months more. Stephen and I sat on a
+    couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in his bed with
+    his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as if
+    he had been in a king's palace of blue air."</p>
+
+    <p>This was William Ernest Henley, and his brave determination
+    to live and work, though he knew he must ever remain in a
+    maimed condition, roused Stevenson's sincere admiration. With
+    his usual impetuous generosity, he brought him books and other
+    comforts to make his prolonged stay in the infirmary less
+    wearisome and a warm friendship sprang up between them.</p>
+
+    <p>As Henley grew stronger they planned to work together and
+    write plays. Stevenson had done nothing of the kind since he
+    was nineteen. Now they chose to use the same plot that he had
+    experimented with at that time. It was the story of the
+    notorious Deacon Brodie of Edinburgh, which both considered
+    contained good material for a play.</p>
+
+    <p>"A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in good
+    society, crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who
+    could sing a song with taste. Many a citizen was proud to
+    welcome the Deacon to supper, and dismiss him with regret ...
+    who would have been vastly disconcerted had he known how soon,
+    and in what guise his visitor returned. Many stories are told
+    of this redoubtable Edinburgh burgher.... A friend of Brodie's
+    ... told him of a projected visit to the country, and
+    afterwards detained by some affairs, put it off and stayed the
+    night in town. The good man had lain some time awake; it was
+    far on in the small hours by the Tron bell; when suddenly there
+    came a crack, a jar, a faint light. Softly he clambered out of
+    bed and up to a false window which looked upon another room,
+    and there, by the glimmer of a thieves' lantern, was his good
+    friend the Deacon in a mask."</p>
+
+    <p>At length after a certain robbery in one of the government
+    offices the Deacon was suspected. He escaped to Holland, but
+    was arrested in Amsterdam as he was about to start for America.
+    He was brought back to Edinburgh, was tried and convicted and
+    hanged on the second of October, 1788, at the west end of the
+    Tolbooth, which was the famous old Edinburgh prison known as
+    the Heart of Midlothian.</p><a name="image005"
+          id="image005"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image005.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="396"
+             alt="Edinburgh Castle"> <span class=
+             "caption">Edinburgh Castle</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>This story of Brodie had always interested Stevenson since
+    he had heard it as a child, and a cabinet made by the clever
+    Deacon himself formed part of the furniture of his nursery.</p>
+
+    <p>"Deacon Brodie" and other plays were finished and produced,
+    but never proved successful. Indeed, the money came in but
+    slowly from any of his writings and, aside from the critics, it
+    was many a long day before he was appreciated by the people of
+    his own city and country. They refused to believe that "that
+    daft laddie Stevenson," who had so often shocked them by his
+    eccentric ways and scorn of conventions, could do anything
+    worth while. So by far his happiest times were spent out of
+    Scotland, principally in London, where a membership in the
+    Savile Club added to his enjoyment. Here he met several
+    interesting men, among them Edmund William Gosse and Sidney
+    Colvin, both writers and literary critics, with whom he became
+    very intimate.</p>
+
+    <p>"My experience of Stevenson," writes Mr. Gosse, "during
+    these first years was confined to London upon which he would
+    make sudden piratical descents, staying a few days or weeks and
+    melting into thin air again. He was much at my house, and it
+    must be told that my wife and I, as young married people, had
+    possessed ourselves of a house too large for our slender means
+    immediately to furnish. The one person who thoroughly approved
+    of our great bare absurd drawing room was Louis, who very
+    earnestly dealt with us on the immorality of chairs and tables,
+    and desired us to sit always, as he delighted to sit, upon
+    hassocks on the floor. Nevertheless, as armchairs and settees
+    straggled into existence, he handsomely consented to use them,
+    although never in the usual way, but with his legs thrown
+    sidewise over the arms of them, or the head of a sofa treated
+    as a perch. In particular, a certain shelf with cupboards
+    below, attached to a bookcase, is worn with the person of
+    Stevenson, who would spend half an evening, while passionately
+    discussing some question ... leaping sidewise in a seated
+    posture to the length of this shelf and back again.</p>
+
+    <p>"... These were the days when he most frequented the Savile
+    Club, and the lightest and most vivacious part of him there
+    came to the surface. He might spend the morning in work or
+    business, and would then come to the club for luncheon. If he
+    were so fortunate as to find a congenial companion disengaged,
+    or to induce them to throw over their engagements, he would
+    lead him off to the smoking-room, and there spend an afternoon
+    in the highest spirits and the most brilliant and audacious
+    talk.</p>
+
+    <p>"He was simply bubbling with quips and jests. I am anxious
+    that his laughter-loving mood should not be forgotten, because
+    later on it was partly, but I think never wholly quenched, by
+    ill health, responsibility and advance of years.</p>
+
+    <p>"His private thoughts and prospects must often have been of
+    the gloomiest, but he seems to have borne his unhappiness with
+    a courage as high as he ever afterwards displayed."</p>
+
+    <p>Sidney Colvin he met some time previous while visiting
+    relatives in England, and their friendship was renewed when
+    they met again in London; a friendship which lasted throughout
+    their lives and which even the distance of two seas failed to
+    obliterate. They kept up a lively correspondence and Mr. Colvin
+    aided him with the publication of his writings while he was
+    absent from his own country. After his death, according to
+    Stevenson's wishes, Mr. Colvin edited a large collection of his
+    letters and in the notes which he added paid his friend many
+    splendid tributes which show him to be a fair critic as well as
+    an ardent admirer. "He had only to speak," he says, "in order
+    to be recognized in the first minute for a witty and charming
+    gentleman, and within the first five minutes for a master
+    spirit and man of genius."</p>
+
+    <p>Louis's long absences from home often troubled his mother
+    and caused her to complain when writing. In one answer to her
+    about this time he said:</p>
+
+    <p>"You must not be vexed at my absences, you must understand I
+    shall be a nomad, more or less, until my days be done. You
+    don't know how much I used to long for it in the old days; how
+    I used to go and look at the trains leaving, and wish to go
+    with them. And now, you know, that I have a little more that is
+    solid under my feet, you must take my nomadic habit as a part
+    of me. Just wait till I am in swing and you will see that I
+    shall pass more of my life with you than elsewhere; only take
+    me as I am and give me time. I <i>must</i> be a bit of a
+    vagabond."</p>
+
+    <p>For all so little of his writing was ever done in his own
+    country, nevertheless he turned to Scotland again and again for
+    the setting of his stories and the subject of his essays.
+    Although he often spoke harshly of Edinburgh when at home, he
+    paid her many loving tributes in writing of her in a foreign
+    land: "The quaint grey-castled city where the bells clash of a
+    Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers fly and
+    beat.... I do not even know if I desire to live there, but let
+    me hear in some far land a kindred voice sing out 'Oh, why left
+    I my hame?' and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind
+    heavens, and no society of the wise and good, can repay me for
+    my absence from my own country. And although I think I would
+    rather die elsewhere, yet in my heart of hearts I long to be
+    buried among good Scotch clods. I will say it fairly, it grows
+    on me with every year; there are no stars so lovely as the
+    Edinburgh street lamps. When I forget thee, Auld Reekie, may my
+    right hand forget its cunning."</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_V"
+       id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+    <h3>AMATEUR EMIGRANT</h3>
+
+    <p class="poem">"Hope went before them
+    <br>
+     And the world was wide."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>In the summer of 1879 R.L.S. was once more seized with the
+    desire to roam and to roam farther than ever before. California
+    had been beckoning to him for some time, and in August he
+    suddenly made up his mind, and with scarcely a word of farewell
+    to his family and friends he embarked on the steamship
+    <i>Devonia</i>, bound for New York.</p>
+
+    <p>Partly for the sake of economy, for he determined to pay his
+    own way on this venture, and partly because he was anxious to
+    experience emigrant life, he engaged passage in the second
+    cabin, which in those days differed very little from the
+    steerage. The main advantages were a trifle better food and a
+    cabin to himself with a table where he could write.</p>
+
+    <p>In his usual way he soon made acquaintance with his fellow
+    passengers and did them many a friendly turn. They took him for
+    one of themselves and showed little curiosity as to where he
+    came from, who he was, or where he was going. He says: "The
+    sailors called me 'mate,' the officers addressed me as 'my
+    man,' my comrades accepted me without hesitation for a person
+    of their own character and experience. One, a mason himself,
+    believed I was a mason, several, among these at least one of
+    the seamen, judged me to be a petty officer in the American
+    navy; and I was so often set down for a practical engineer that
+    at last I had not the heart to deny it."</p>
+
+    <p>The emigrants were from many countries, though the majority
+    were Scotch and Irish bound for the new world with the hope of
+    meeting with better fortune than they had had in the old, and
+    they whiled away the days at sea in their several ways, making
+    the best of their discomforts and cheering one another when
+    they grew lonely or homesick for those they had left
+    behind.</p>
+
+    <p>When the weather was good their spirits rose and there were
+    many rounds of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered
+    together like bees under the lee of the deck-house, and in all
+    of these Stevenson joined heartily.</p>
+
+    <p>"We were indeed a musical ship's company," he says, "and
+    cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and
+    the songs of all nations, good, bad or
+    indifferent&mdash;Scottish, English, Irish, Russian or
+    Norse&mdash;the songs were received with generous applause.
+    Once or twice, a recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a
+    powerful Scotch accent, varied the proceedings; and once we
+    sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight men of us together,
+    to the music of the violin. The performers were humorous,
+    frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but as
+    soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted
+    themselves like so many mutes at a funeral. I have never seen
+    decorum pushed so far; and as this was not expected, the
+    quadrille was soon whistled off, and the dancers departed.</p>
+
+    <p>"But the impulse to sing was strong, and triumphed over
+    modesty and even the inclemencies of the sea and sky. On one
+    rough Saturday night, we got together by the main deck-house,
+    in a place sheltered from the wind and rain. Some clinging to
+    the ladder which led to the hurricane-deck and the rest
+    knitting arms or taking hands, we made a ring to support the
+    women in the violent lurching of the ship, and when we were
+    thus disposed, sang to our hearts' content.</p>
+
+    <p>"There was a single chess-board and a single pack of cards.
+    Sometimes as many as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for
+    love. There were feats of dexterity, puzzles for the
+    intelligence and a regular daily competition to guess the
+    vessel's progress; at twelve o'clock when the result was
+    published in the wheel house, came to be a moment of
+    considerable interest.... We had beside, romps in plenty. Puss
+    in the Corner, which we rebaptized, in more manly style, Devil
+    and Four Corners, was my favorite game; but there were many who
+    preferred another, the humor of which was to box a person's
+    ears until he found out who cuffed him."</p>
+
+    <p>The voyage, which lasted ten days, was uneventful except for
+    some rough weather when Stevenson found his cabin most stuffy
+    and uncomfortable. He was not really ill, however, and spent
+    much of the time finishing a tale called "The Story of a Lie,"
+    while his table played "Bob Jerry with the ink bottle." On his
+    arrival in New York the story was sent back to London with the
+    following letter to Sidney Colvin:</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p class="address">"On Board S.S. Devonia an hour or two out of
+    New York, Aug., 1879.</p>
+
+    <p class="sc">"My dear Colvin:</p>
+
+    <p>"I have finished my story. The handwriting is not good
+    because of the ship's misconduct; thirty-one pages in ten days
+    at sea is not bad. I am not very well; bad food, bad air and
+    hard work have brought me down. But the spirits keep good. The
+    voyage has been most interesting and will make, if not a series
+    of Pall Mall articles, at least the first part of a new book.
+    The last weight on me has been trying to keep notes for this
+    purpose. Indeed I have worked like a horse and am tired as a
+    donkey. If I should have to push on far by rail, I shall bring
+    nothing but my fine bones to port.</p>
+
+    <p>"Goodbye to you all. I suppose it is now late afternoon with
+    you all across the seas. What shall I find over here? I dare
+    not wonder.&mdash;Ever yours &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+    R.L.S."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>As California was the goal he aimed for, in spite of his
+    fatigue after ten days of poor living and the sea, he
+    determined to push on immediately in an emigrant train bound
+    for the Pacific coast.</p>
+
+    <p>On reaching port he and a man named Jones, with whom he had
+    had more in common than with any of his other fellow
+    passengers, landed together.</p>
+
+    <p>"Jones and I issued into West Street, sitting on some straw
+    in the bottom of an open baggage wagon. It rained miraculously,
+    and from that moment till on the following night I left New
+    York, there was scarce a lull, and no cessation of the
+    downpour....</p>
+
+    <p>"It took but a few moments, though it cost a good deal of
+    money, to be rattled along West Street to our destination:
+    Reunion House, No. 10 West Street, 'kept by one Mitchell.'</p>
+
+    <p>"Here I was at last in America and was soon out upon the New
+    York streets, spying for things foreign....</p>
+
+    <p>"The following day I had a thousand and one things to do;
+    only the day to do them in and a journey across the continent
+    before me in the evening.... It rained with potent fury; every
+    now and then I had to get under cover for a while in order, so
+    to speak, to give my mackintosh a rest; for under this
+    continued drenching it began to grow damp on the inside. I went
+    to banks, post-offices, railway offices, restaurants,
+    publishers, book sellers and money changers.</p>
+
+    <p>"I was so wet when I got back to Mitchell's toward evening,
+    that I had simply to divest myself of my shoes, socks and
+    trousers, and leave them behind for the benefit of New York
+    City. No fire could have dried them ere I had to start; and to
+    pack them in their present condition was to spread ruin among
+    my other possessions. With a heavy heart I said farewell to
+    them as they lay a pulp in the middle of a pool upon the floor
+    of Mitchell's kitchen. I wonder if they are dry by now."</p>
+
+    <p>That night he joined a party of emigrants bound for the
+    West, the weight of his baggage much increased by the result of
+    his day's purchases&mdash;Bancroft's "History of the United
+    States" in six fat volumes. So in less than twenty-four hours
+    after landing on one coast he was on his way to the other.</p>
+
+    <p>If at times he had been uncomfortable on the steamer he was
+    ten times more so on the train. It is hard to realize in these
+    days of easy travelling what the discomforts of riding in the
+    emigrant trains were; crowded together in badly lighted, badly
+    ventilated cars, with stiff wooden benches on either side,
+    which were most uncomfortable to sit on and next to impossible
+    to lie down upon. Meals were taken as best they might when they
+    stopped at way stations while some bought milk and eggs and
+    made a shift to cook themselves a meal or brew a cup of tea on
+    the stove at the end of the car.</p>
+
+    <p>Over a week of this sort of slow travelling through the heat
+    of the plains was enough to tax the strength and courage of the
+    most robust man, let alone one in as delicate health as
+    Stevenson at that time, and it is a wonder he ever lived
+    through it. Indeed, he was ill but kept cheerful in spite of
+    all, and was interested in the country and the sights along the
+    way. His own discomforts seemed to dwindle when he contrasted
+    them with those the pioneers endured travelling that same
+    direction twenty years before; crawling along in ox-carts with
+    their cattle and family possessions; suffering hunger, thirst,
+    and infinite weariness, and living in daily terror of attack
+    from the Indians.</p>
+
+    <p>He made note of all he saw and the doings of his fellow
+    emigrants, to be used later on. Letters to Henley and Colvin en
+    route are interesting.</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p class="address">"In the Emigrant Train from New York to San
+    Francisco, Aug., 1879.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="sc">Dear Colvin</span>,&mdash;I am in the cars
+    between Pittsburg and Chicago, just now bowling through Ohio. I
+    am taking charge of a kid, whose mother is asleep, with one eye
+    while I write you this with the other. I reached N.Y. Sunday
+    night, and by five o'clock Monday was underway for the
+    West.&mdash;It is now about ten on Wednesday morning, so I have
+    already been forty hours in the cars. It is impossible to lie
+    down in them, which must end by being very wearying....</p>
+
+    <p>"No man is any use until he has dared everything; I feel
+    just now as if I had, and so might become a man. 'If ye have
+    faith like a grain of mustard seed.' That is so true! Just now
+    I have faith as big as a cigar case, I will not say die, and I
+    do not fear man nor fortune.&mdash;R.L.S."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p class="address">"Crossing Nebraska, Saturday, Aug. 23,
+    1879.</p>
+
+    <p>"<span class="sc">My Dear Henley</span>,&mdash;I am sitting
+    on the top of the cars with a mill party from Missouri going
+    west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all hands....
+    When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight
+    travel together, the kine first, the man after, the whole plain
+    is heard singing with cicadae. This is a pause, as you may see
+    from the writing. What happened to the old pedestrian
+    emigrants; what was the tedium suffered by the Indians and
+    trappers of our youth, the imagination trembles to conceive.
+    This is now Saturday, 23rd, and I have been steadily travelling
+    since I parted from you at St. Pancras. It is a strange
+    vicissitude from the Savile Club to this; I sleep with a man
+    from Pennsylvania who has been in the Navy Yard, and mess with
+    him and the Missouri bird already alluded to. We have a tin
+    wash-bowl among four, I wear nothing but a shirt and a pair of
+    trousers and never button my shirt. When I land for a meal, I
+    pass my coat and feel dressed. This life is to last until
+    Friday, Saturday or Sunday next. It is a strange affair to be
+    an emigrant, as I hope you shall see in a future work. I wonder
+    if this will be legible; my present station on the wagon roof,
+    though airy, compared to the cars, is both dirty and insecure.
+    I can see the track straight before and straight behind me to
+    either horizon....</p>
+
+    <p>"Our journey is through ghostly deserts, sage brush and
+    alkali, and rocks without form or color, a sad corner of the
+    world. I confess I am not jolly, but mighty calm, in my
+    distresses. My illness is a subject of great mirth to some of
+    my fellow travellers, and I smile rather sickly at their
+    jests.</p>
+
+    <p>"We are going along Bitter Creek just now, a place infamous
+    in the history of emigration, a place I shall remember myself
+    among the blackest.&mdash;R.L.S."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>When California was finally reached he decided to rest and
+    recover strength by camping out for a few days in the Coast
+    Range Mountains beyond Monterey, but the anxiety and strain of
+    the long journey had been greater than he realized, and he
+    broke down and became very ill. For two nights he lay out under
+    the trees in a kind of stupor and at length was rescued by two
+    frontiersmen in charge of a goat-ranch, who took him to their
+    cabin and cared for him until he partly recovered.</p>
+
+    <p>"Here is another curious start in my life," he wrote to
+    Sidney Colvin. "I am living at an Angora goat-ranch, in the
+    Coast Line Mountains, eighteen miles from Monterey. I was
+    camping out, but got so sick that the two rancheros took me in
+    and tended me. One is an old bear hunter, seventy-two years
+    old, and a captain from the Mexican War; the other a pilgrim,
+    and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when
+    California was taken by the States. They are both true
+    frontiersmen, and most kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the
+    bear hunter, is my physician, and I obey him like an
+    oracle....</p>
+
+    <p>"I am now lying in an upper chamber, with the clinking of
+    goat bells in my ears, which proves to me that the goats are
+    come home and it will soon be time to eat. The old bear hunter
+    is doubtless now infusing tea; and Tom the Indian will come in
+    with his gun in a few moments....</p>
+
+    <p>"The business of my life stands pretty nigh still. I work at
+    my notes of the voyage. It will not be very like a book of
+    mine; but perhaps none the less successful for that. I will not
+    deny that I feel lonely to-day.... I have not yet had a word
+    from England, partly, I suppose, because I have not yet written
+    for my letters to New York; do not blame me for this neglect,
+    if you knew all I have been through, you would wonder I had
+    done as much as I have. I teach the ranch children reading in
+    the morning, for the mother is from home sick.</p>
+
+    <p class="address">"Ever your affectionate friend.
+    <br>
+     "R.L.S."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>As soon as Stevenson was well enough he returned to Monterey
+    and fell to working upon several short stories and the notes of
+    his voyage, which he brought together and published later under
+    the titles "The Amateur Emigrant" and "Across the Plains."</p>
+
+    <p>Monterey in those days was a small Mexican town; "a place of
+    two or three streets economically paved with sea-sand, and two
+    or three lanes, which were the water courses in the rainy
+    season.... The houses were, for the most part, built of unbaked
+    adobe brick....</p>
+
+    <p>"There was no activity but in and around the saloons, where
+    the people sat almost all day playing cards. The smallest
+    excursion was made on horseback. You would scarcely ever see
+    the main street without a horse or two tied to posts, and
+    making a fine figure with their Mexican housings. In a place so
+    exclusively Mexican as Monterey, you saw not only Mexican
+    saddles, but true Vaquero riding&mdash;men always at a hand
+    gallop, up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest corners,
+    urging their horses with cries and gesticulations and cruel
+    rotary spurs, checking them dead, with a touch, or wheeling
+    them right about face in a square yard. Spanish was the
+    language of the street."</p>
+
+    <p>He lodged with a doctor and his wife, and took his meals at
+    the little restaurant kept by Jules Simoneau, "a most pleasant
+    old boy," with whom he played chess and discussed the universe
+    daily.</p>
+
+    <p>About the middle of December he pushed on to San Francisco,
+    and prepared to settle down and work for an indefinite time.
+    Though he had known but few people in Monterey, nevertheless it
+    was a social little place in comparison to a great city like
+    San Francisco, where Stevenson found himself indeed a stranger
+    and friendless and learned for the first time in his life what
+    it really meant to be lonely.</p>
+
+    <p>Funds were running low; so he secured the cheapest possible
+    lodging and took his meals at various small restaurants, living
+    at the rate of seventy cents a day.</p>
+
+    <p>On December 26 he wrote: "For four days I have spoken to no
+    one but my landlady or landlord or the restaurant waiters. This
+    is not a gay way to pass Christmas, is it?" But some days
+    later, nothing daunted, he added: "I lead a pretty happy life,
+    though you might not think it. I have great fun trying to be
+    economical, which I find as good a game of play as any other. I
+    have no want of occupation and though I rarely see any one to
+    speak to, have little time to worry."</p>
+
+    <p>To make matters worse, letters containing money went astray
+    and word came that some articles submitted to his publishers in
+    England, on which he had depended for funds, were not
+    satisfactory, and this forced him to reduce his living expenses
+    to forty-five cents a day. The letters from home were most
+    unsatisfactory and lacked the kind of news he longed for. "Not
+    one soul ever gives me any <i>news</i>," he complained to
+    Sidney Colvin, "about people or things, everybody writes me
+    sermons; it is good for me, but hardly the food necessary for a
+    man who lives all alone on forty-five cents a day, and
+    sometimes less, with quantities of hard work and many heavy
+    thoughts. If one of you could write me a letter with a jest in
+    it, a letter like what is written to real people in the
+    world&mdash;I am still flesh and blood&mdash;I should enjoy it.
+    Simpson did the other day, and it did me as much good as a
+    bottle of wine&mdash;man alive I want gossip."</p>
+
+    <p>Day in and day out he worked doggedly, fighting
+    discouragement, with little strength or inspiration to write
+    anything very worth while.</p>
+
+    <p>To cap all, his landlady's little boy fell ill, and
+    Stevenson, who had a great love and sympathy for all children,
+    helped to nurse him, and this proved too much in the nervous
+    and exhausted state he was in. The boy recovered, but Stevenson
+    fell ill again, and for six weeks hovered between life and
+    death.</p>
+
+    <p>This seems to have been the turning-point in his ill luck.
+    Toward the middle of February, as he slowly began to mend, he
+    was cheered on by long letters from home, full of anxiety for
+    his health and advances of money from his father, with strict
+    instructions that from now on he was no longer to stint and
+    deny himself the bare necessities of life, as he had been
+    doing. Later, in April, came a telegram from Thomas Stevenson
+    saying that in future Louis was to count on an income of two
+    hundred and fifty pounds a year.</p>
+
+    <p>Cheered with the prospect of an easier road ahead of him, he
+    struggled back to life once more with a strong resolve to work
+    harder and make those at home proud of him.</p>
+
+    <p>"It was a considerable shock to my pride to break down," he
+    wrote to a friend, "but there it's done and can not be helped.
+    Had my health held out another month, I should have made a
+    year's income, but breaking down when I did, I am surrounded by
+    unfinished works. It is a good thing my father was on the spot,
+    or I should have had to work and die."</p>
+
+    <p>Early in the spring he and Mrs. Osbourne met again, and on
+    May 19, 1880, they were married in San Francisco.</p>
+
+    <p>For the rest of his life Stevenson had no cause to complain
+    of loneliness, for in his wife he had an "inseparable sharer of
+    all his adventures; the most open-hearted of friends to all
+    those who loved him; the most shrewd and stimulating critic of
+    his work; and in sickness, despite her own precarious health,
+    the most devoted and most efficient of nurses."</p>
+
+    <p>Immediately after their marriage Stevenson and his wife and
+    stepson&mdash;and the dog&mdash;went to the Coast Range
+    Mountains and, taking possession of an old deserted miner's
+    camp, practically lived out-of-doors for the next few months,
+    with no neighbors aside from a hunter and his family.</p>
+
+    <p>This was healthy, but the life of a squatter has its
+    limitations, and their trials and tribulations during these
+    weeks Stevenson told most amusingly in "The Silverado
+    Squatters."</p>
+
+    <p>Gradually a longing began to come to R.L.S. to see those at
+    home once more and have them know his wife. This desire grew so
+    from day to day that July found them bidding good-by to
+    California, and on the 7th of August they sailed from New York
+    for Liverpool.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI"
+       id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+    <h3>SCOTLAND AGAIN</h3>
+
+    <p class="poem">"Bells upon the city are ringing in the night,
+    <br>
+     High above the gardens are the houses full of light,
+    <br>
+     On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free,
+    <br>
+     And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"We canna break the bonds that God decreed to
+    bind,
+    <br>
+     Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind,
+    <br>
+     Far away from home O, it's still for you and me
+    <br>
+     That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>On his return to Scotland the spell of his own land fell
+    upon R.L.S. for the first time. He realized now how he loved it
+    spite of its bad climate, how much there was at home waiting
+    for him. "After all," he said, "new countries, sun, music, and
+    all the rest, can never take down our gusty, rainy, smoky, grim
+    old city out of the first place it has been making for itself
+    in the bottom of my soul."</p>
+
+    <p>But he had returned only to be banished. The doctors found
+    his lungs too weak to risk Edinburgh winters and advised him to
+    try the Alps.</p>
+
+    <p>Accordingly a cottage was rented in Davos Platz, a health
+    resort. There and at similar places near by they spent the next
+    few winters with visits to England and France between.
+    Switzerland never suited Stevenson. He disliked living among
+    invalids, and with his love for exploring the nooks and corners
+    of any spot he was in he felt like a prisoner when he found
+    himself shut in a valley among continual snow with few walks
+    possible for him to take. "The mountains are about me like a
+    trap," he complained. "You can not foot it up a hillside and
+    behold the sea on a great plain, but live in holes and corners
+    and can change only one for the other."</p>
+
+    <p>Tobogganing was the only sport of Davos Platz he really
+    enjoyed, and he pursued that to his heart's content. "Perhaps
+    the true way to toboggan is alone and at night," he said.
+    "First comes the tedious climb dragging your instrument behind
+    you. Next a long breathing space, alone with the snow and pine
+    woods, cold, silent and solemn to the heart. Then you push off;
+    the toboggan fetches away, she begins to feel the hill, to
+    glide, to swim, to gallop. In a breath you are out from under
+    the pine-trees and the whole heaven full of stars reels and
+    flashes overhead."</p>
+
+    <p>He accomplished little work at this time. Sometimes for days
+    he would be unable to write at all. But the little boy who had
+    once told his mother, "I have been trying to make myself
+    happy," was the same man now who could say: "I was never bored
+    in my life." When unable to do anything else he would build
+    houses of cards or lie in bed and model little figures in clay.
+    Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind distracted from
+    the stories that crowded his brain and he had not strength to
+    put on paper. His one horror, the fear that urged him on to
+    work feverishly when he was suffering almost beyond endurance,
+    was the thought that his illness might one day make him a
+    helpless invalid.</p>
+
+    <p>The splendid part to think of is that no hint of his dark
+    days and pains crept into his writings or saddened those who
+    came to see him. Complaint he kept to himself, prayed that he
+    might "continue to be eager to be happy," lived with the best
+    that was in him from day to day, and the words that went forth
+    from his sick-room have cheered and encouraged thousands.</p>
+
+    <p>When asked why he wrote so many stories of pirates and
+    adventurers with few women to soften them he replied: "I
+    suppose it's the contrast; I have always admired great
+    strength, even in a pirate. Courage has interested me more than
+    anything else."</p>
+
+    <p>He and his stepson had grown to be great chums. At Silverado
+    Lloyd had been seized with a desire to write stories and had
+    set up a toy printing-press which turned off several tales. At
+    Davos Platz they both tried their hand at illustrating these
+    stories with pictures cut on wood-blocks and gayly colored.
+    Lloyd's room was quite a gallery of these artistic attempts.
+    But their favorite diversion was to play at a war game with
+    lead soldiers. In after-years Lloyd wrote his recollections of
+    the days they spent together enjoying this fun and he says:
+    "The war game was constantly improved and elaborated, until
+    from a few hours, a war took weeks to play, and the critical
+    operations in the attic monopolized half our thoughts. This
+    attic was a most chilly and dismal spot, reached by a crazy
+    ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted window; so low at
+    the eaves and so dark that we could seldom stand upright, nor
+    see without a candle. Upon the attic floor a map was roughly
+    drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers,
+    towns, bridges, and roads of two classes. Here we would play by
+    the hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an
+    intentness, zest, and excitement that I shall never forget.</p>
+
+    <p>"The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed
+    by measured evolutions from column formation into line, with
+    cavalry screens in front and massed support behind, in the most
+    approved military fashion of to-day."</p>
+
+    <p>Neither of them ever grew too old for this sport. Year after
+    year they went back to the game. Even when they went to Samoa
+    they laid out a campaign room with maps chalked on the
+    floor.</p>
+
+    <p>In the spring of 1885 Thomas Stevenson purchased a house at
+    Bournemouth, England, near London, as a present for his
+    daughter-in-law.</p>
+
+    <p>They named the cottage "Skerryvore," after the famous
+    lighthouse he had helped to build in his young days, and it was
+    their home for the next three years&mdash;busy ones for
+    R.L.S.</p><a name="image006"
+          id="image006"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image006.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="384"
+             alt="Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth"> <span class=
+             "caption">Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>It was a real joy to have his father and mother and Bob
+    Stevenson with them again and his friends in London frequently
+    drop in for a visit.</p>
+
+    <p>His health was never worse than during the Bournemouth days.
+    He seldom went beyond his own garden-gate but lived, as he
+    says, "like a weevil in a biscuit." Yet he never worked harder
+    or accomplished more. He wrote in bed and out of bed, sick or
+    well, poems, plays, short stories, and verses.</p>
+
+    <p>He finished "Treasure Island," the book that gained him his
+    first popularity, and wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which
+    made him famous at home and abroad.</p>
+
+    <p>"Treasure Island" had been started some time previous to
+    please Lloyd, who asked him to write a "good story." It all
+    began with a map. Stevenson always loved maps, and one day
+    during a picture-making bout he had drawn a fine one. "It was
+    elaborately and (I thought) beautifully colored," he says. "The
+    shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained
+    harbors that pleased me like sonnets.... I ticketed my
+    performance Treasure Island."</p>
+
+    <p>Immediately the island began to take life and swarm with
+    people, all sorts of strange scenes began to take place upon
+    it, and as he gazed at his map Stevenson discovered the plot
+    for the "good story."</p>
+
+    <p>"It is horrid fun," he wrote, "and begins in the Admiral
+    Benbow public house on the Devon coast; all about a map and a
+    treasure and a mutiny, and a derelict ship ... and a doctor and
+    a sea-cook with one leg with the chorus 'yo-ho-ho and a bottle
+    of rum,' ... No women in the story, Lloyd orders."</p>
+
+    <p>Parts of the coast at Monterey flashed back to his mind and
+    helped him to picture the scenery of his "Treasure Island." "It
+    was just such a place as the Monterey sand hills the hero John
+    Hawkins found himself on leaving his mutinous shipmates. It was
+    just such a thicket of live oak growing low along the sand like
+    brambles, that he crawled and dodged when he heard the voices
+    of the pirates near him and saw Long John Silver strike down
+    with his crutch one of his mates who had refused to join in his
+    plan for murder."</p><a name="image007"
+          id="image007"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:600px;">
+        <img src="images/image007.jpg"
+             width="600"
+             height="982"
+             alt="The Treasure Island map"> <span class=
+             "caption">The Treasure Island map</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>As the story grew he read each new chapter aloud to the
+    family in the evening. He was writing it for one boy, but found
+    he had more in his audience. "My father," he says, "not only
+    heard with delight the daily chapter, but set himself actively
+    to collaborate. When the time came for Billy Bones' chest to be
+    ransacked, he must have passed the better part of a day
+    preparing on the back of a legal envelope an inventory of its
+    contents, which I exactly followed, and the name of Flint's old
+    ship, the Walrus, was given at his particular request."</p>
+
+    <p>When the map was redrawn for the book it was embellished
+    with "blowing whales and sailing ships; and my father himself
+    brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and
+    elaborately <i>forged</i> the signature of Captain Flint and
+    the sailing directions of Billy Bones."</p>
+
+    <p>These daily readings were rare treats to those at
+    Skerryvore, for Stevenson was a most dramatic reader. "When he
+    came to stand in the place of Silver you could almost have
+    imagined you saw the great one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed,
+    on the rolling sea."</p>
+
+    <p>The book was not long in springing into popularity. Not only
+    the boys enjoyed it but all sorts of staid and sober men became
+    boys once more and sat up long after bedtime to finish the
+    tale. Mr. Gladstone caught a glimpse of it at a friend's house
+    and did not rest the next day until he had procured a copy for
+    himself, and Andrew Lang said: "This is the kind of stuff a
+    fellow wants. I don't know when, except Tom Sawyer and the
+    Odyssey, that I ever liked a romance so well."</p>
+
+    <p>It was translated into many different languages, even
+    appearing serially in certain Greek and Spanish papers.</p>
+
+    <p>"Kidnapped" followed; a story founded on the Appan murder.
+    David Balfour, the hero, was one of his own ancestors; Alan
+    Breck had actually lived, and the Alison who ferried Alan and
+    David over to Torryburn was one of Cummie's own people. The
+    Highland country where the scenes were laid, he had traversed
+    many times, and the Island of Earraid, where David was
+    shipwrecked, was the spot where he had spent some of his
+    engineering days.</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson had often said the "brownies" in his dreams gave
+    him ideas for his tales. At Skerryvore they came to him with a
+    story that among all his others is counted the greatest.</p>
+
+    <p>"In the small hours one morning," says his wife, "I was
+    awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a
+    nightmare I awakened him. He said angrily, 'Why did you wake
+    me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.'"</p>
+
+    <p>The dream was so vivid that he could not rest until he had
+    written off the story, and it so possessed him that the first
+    draft was finished within three days. It was called "The
+    Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."</p>
+
+    <p>This story instantly created much discussion. Articles were
+    written about it, sermons were preached on it, and letters
+    poured in from all sorts of people with their theories about
+    the strange tale. Six months after it was published nearly
+    forty thousand copies were sold in England alone; but its
+    greatest success was in America where its popularity was
+    immediate and its sale enormous.</p>
+
+    <p>One day he was attracted by a book of verses about children
+    by Kate Greenaway, and wondered why he could not write some too
+    of the children he remembered best of all. Scenes and doings in
+    the days spent at Colinton with his swarm of cousins; the games
+    they had played and the people they had known all trooped back
+    with other memories of Edinburgh days. As he recalled these
+    children, they tripped from his pen until he had a delightful
+    collection of verses and determined to bring them together in a
+    book.</p>
+
+    <p>First he called it "The Penny Whistle," but soon changed the
+    title to "A Child's Garden of Verses" and dedicated it, with
+    the following poem, to the only one he said who would really
+    understand the verses, the one who had done so much to make his
+    childhood days happy:</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p class="poem">TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM</p>
+
+    <p class="poem"><span class="i4"><font size="-1">FROM HER
+    BOY</font></span></p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"For the long nights you lay awake
+    <br>
+     And watched for my unworthy sake;
+    <br>
+     For your most comfortable hand
+    <br>
+     That led me through the uneven land;
+    <br>
+     For all the story-books you read;
+    <br>
+     For all the pains you comforted;
+    <br>
+     For all you pitied, all you bore
+    <br>
+     In sad and happy days of yore;&mdash;
+    <br>
+     My second Mother, my first wife,
+    <br>
+     The angel of my infant life&mdash;
+    <br>
+     From the sick child, now well and old,
+    <br>
+     Take, nurse, the little book you hold!</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"And grant it, Heaven, that all who read,
+    <br>
+     May find as dear a nurse at need,
+    <br>
+     And every child who lists my rhyme,
+    <br>
+     In the bright fireside, nursery clime,
+    <br>
+     May hear it in as kind a voice
+    <br>
+     As made my childish days rejoice."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>"Of course," he said, speaking of this dedication when he
+    wrote to Cummie about the book, "this is only a flourish, like
+    taking off one's hat, but still a person who has taken the
+    trouble to write things does not dedicate them to anyone
+    without meaning it; and you must try to take this dedication in
+    place of a great many things that I might have said, and that I
+    ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether
+    unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe
+    you."</p><a name="image008"
+          id="image008"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image008.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="376"
+             alt=
+             "Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with &quot;An Inland Voyage&quot;">
+             <span class="caption">Facsimile of letter sent to
+             Cummy with "An Inland Voyage"</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>If Thomas Stevenson had been one of the first to doubt his
+    boy's literary ability, he was equally quick to acknowledge
+    himself mistaken. He was proud of his brilliant son, keenly
+    interested in whatever he was working on and, during the days
+    spent together at Skerryvore, gave him valuable aid in his
+    writing.</p>
+
+    <p>To have this old-time comradeship with his father, to enjoy
+    his sympathy and understanding once more was Stevenson's
+    greatest joy at this time; a joy which he sorrowfully realized
+    he must soon part with forever as his father's health was
+    failing rapidly.</p>
+
+    <p>Thomas Stevenson remained at Skerryvore until April, 1887,
+    when he left for a short visit to Edinburgh. While there he
+    became suddenly worse and died on the 8th of May.</p>
+
+    <p>Louis's greatest reason for remaining in England was gone
+    now, and he determined to cross the ocean with his family once
+    more.</p>
+
+    <p>His mother willingly gave up her home, her family, her
+    friends, and the comforts she had always enjoyed to go with him
+    to a new country, on any venture he might propose if his health
+    could only be improved thereby.</p>
+
+    <p>On August 21, 1887, Louis bade good-by to Scotland for the
+    last time and sailed away from London on the steamship
+    <i>Ludgate Hill</i> for New York.</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII"
+       id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+    <h3>SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA</h3>
+
+    <p class="blockquot">"Tis a good land to fall in with men, and
+    a pleasant land to see."</p>
+
+    <p class="blockquot"><span style=
+    "text-align: right;">&mdash;(<i>Words spoken by Hendrik Hudson
+    when he first brought his ship through the Narrows and saw the
+    Bay of New York</i>.)</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>Stevenson's second landing in New York was a great contrast
+    to his first. The "Amateur Emigrant" had no one to bid him
+    welcome and Godspeed but a West Street tavern-keeper, and now
+    when Mr. Will Low, his old friend of Fontainebleau days,
+    hastened to the dock to welcome him on the <i>Ludgate Hill</i>,
+    he found the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" already
+    surrounded by reporters.</p>
+
+    <p>The trip had done him good in spite of their passage having
+    been an unusually rough one, with numerous discomforts. The
+    <i>Ludgate Hill</i> was not an up-to-date liner and she carried
+    a very mixed cargo. The very fact of her being a tramp ship and
+    that the passengers were free to be about with the men and
+    officers, stay in the wheel-house, and enjoy a real sea life,
+    delighted Stevenson, and he wrote back to Sidney Colvin:</p>
+
+    <p>"I enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our
+    floating menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our
+    cargo; and the vast continent of the incongruities rolled the
+    while like a haystack; and the stallions stood hypnotized by
+    the motion, looking through the port at our dinner table, and
+    winnied when the crockery was broken; and the little monkeys
+    stared at one another in their cages ... and the big monkey,
+    Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms
+    ... the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on
+    and laughed. Take all this picture, and make it roll till the
+    bell shall sound unexpected notes and the fittings shall break
+    loose in our state rooms, and you have the voyage of the
+    Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of New York without beer,
+    porter, soda-water, curaçoa, fresh meat, or fresh water, and
+    yet we lived and we regret her."</p>
+
+    <p>After a short visit with friends in Newport they returned to
+    New York and settled down for a time in the Hotel St. Stephen,
+    on 11th Street, near University Place, to make plans for their
+    winter's trip.</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after their arrival "Jekyll and Hyde" was dramatized
+    and produced with great success. When it was known that the
+    author of this remarkable story was in the city, people flocked
+    from all sides to call on him, and fairly wearied him with
+    their attentions, although he liked to see them and made many
+    interesting acquaintances at the time.</p>
+
+    <p>Washington Square was one of his favorite spots in New York,
+    and he spent many hours there watching the children playing
+    about. A day he always recalled with special pleasure was the
+    one when he had spent a whole forenoon in the Square talking
+    with Mark Twain.</p>
+
+    <p>Among those who were anxious to know Stevenson was the
+    American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. He had been delighted
+    with his writings and regretted he had not met him in Paris
+    when he and Mr. Low had been there together. "If Stevenson ever
+    comes to New York," he said to Mr. Low, "I want to meet him,"
+    and added that he would consider it a great privilege if
+    Stevenson would permit him to make his portrait.</p>
+
+    <p>It was with much pleasure, therefore, that Mr. Low brought
+    them together, and they took to one another immediately. "I
+    like your sculptor. What a splendid straightforward and simple
+    fellow he is," said Stevenson; and St. Gaudens's comment after
+    their first meeting was: "Astonishingly young, not a bit like
+    an invalid and a bully fellow."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson readily consented to sit for his portrait, and
+    they spent many delightful hours together while the sketches
+    were being made for it.</p>
+
+    <p>One day the sculptor brought his eight-year-old son, Homer,
+    with him, and years afterward gave the following description of
+    the child's visit:</p>
+
+    <p>"On the way I endeavored to impress on the boy the fact that
+    he was about to see a man whom he must remember all his life.
+    It was a lovely day and as I entered the room Stevenson lay as
+    usual on rather a high bed. I presented Homer to him ... but
+    since my son's interest, notwithstanding my injunctions, was to
+    say the least far from enthusiastic, I sent him out to
+    play.</p><a name="image009"
+          id="image009"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image009.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="427"
+             alt=
+             "Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus Saint Gaudens">
+             <span class="caption">Bas-relief of Stevenson by
+             Augustus Saint Gaudens</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"I then asked Stevenson to pose but that was not successful
+    ... all the gestures being forced and affected. Therefore I
+    suggested to him that if he would try to write, some natural
+    attitude might result. He assented and taking a sheet of paper
+    ... he pulled his knees up and began. Immediately his attitude
+    was such that I was enabled to create something of use and
+    continued drawing while he wrote with an occasional smile.
+    Presently I finished and told him there was no necessity for
+    his writing any more. He did not reply but proceeded for quite
+    a while. Then he folded the paper with deliberation, placed it
+    in an envelope, addressed it, and handed it to me. It was to
+    'Master Homer St. Gaudens.'</p>
+
+    <p>"I asked him: 'Do you wish me to give this to the boy?'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Yes,'</p>
+
+    <p>"'When? Now?'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Oh, no, in five or ten years, or when I am dead.'</p>
+
+    <p>"I put it in a safe and here it is:</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p class="address">"May 27, 1888.</p>
+
+    <p>"<span class="sc">Dear Homer St. Gaudens</span>&mdash;Your
+    father has brought you this day to see me and tells me it is
+    his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going to do what I
+    can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after,
+    to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I
+    must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest
+    whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit
+    displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and
+    this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your
+    character. You were also,&mdash;I use the past tense with a
+    view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I
+    am writing,&mdash;a very pretty boy, and to my European views
+    startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so
+    limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more ... but
+    you may perhaps like to know that the lean, flushed man in bed,
+    who interested you so little, was in a state of mind extremely
+    mingled and unpleasant; harassed with work which he thought he
+    was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which you
+    will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a
+    matter than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of
+    savage and desert islands.</p>
+
+    <p class="center">"Your father's friend,</p>
+
+    <p class="address"
+       style="margin-top:-0.8em;"><span class="sc">"Robert Louis
+       Stevenson."</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>The portrait was finished in bas-relief and many copies were
+    made of it. The most familiar is the one giving only
+    Stevenson's head and shoulders, but the splendid big one placed
+    as a memorial to him in St. Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh
+    shows him as he must have looked that day lying in bed, writing
+    to Homer St. Gaudens.</p>
+
+    <p>Another man in New York whom Stevenson had admired for years
+    and longed to meet was General Sherman. The war was long past,
+    and he was then an old gentleman living very quietly. One day
+    St. Gaudens took Stevenson to call on him, and he was asked
+    afterward if he was at all disappointed in his hero.</p>
+
+    <p>"Disappointed," he exclaimed. "It was simply magnificent to
+    stand in the presence of one who has done what he has, and then
+    to find him so genial and human. It was the next thing to
+    seeing Wellington, and I dare say the Iron Duke would not have
+    been half so human."</p>
+
+    <p>The anticipation of a train trip across the continent was so
+    distasteful that a proposed visit to Colorado was given up, and
+    they decided to try the climate of the Adirondacks for the
+    winter instead.</p>
+
+    <p>They chose Saranac, not far from the Canadian border, and
+    rented a cottage there.</p>
+
+    <p>The climate was as unpleasant as possible. It rained,
+    snowed, sleeted, and froze continually. The cold at times was
+    arctic, the thermometer dropping thirty degrees below zero in
+    January. "Venison was crunching with ice after being an hour in
+    the oven, and a large lump of ice was still unmelted in a pot
+    where water was steaming all around it."</p>
+
+    <p>Their cottage was dubbed "Hunter's Home." It was far from
+    the railroad, few luxuries were to be had, and they lived a
+    simple life in earnest.</p>
+
+    <p>Of course, they had a dog; no "hunter's home" would be
+    complete without one, but Louis scouted the idea of adding
+    things as unfitting as plush table-covers and upholstered
+    footstools. The table went bare, and he fashioned a footstool
+    for his mother out of a log, in true backwoods fashion.</p>
+
+    <p>His wife and mother found the cold hard to bear, but he
+    stood it remarkably well and benefited by it. Saranac reminded
+    him of Scotland, he said, without the smell of peats and the
+    heather.</p>
+
+    <p>Dressed in a buffalo coat, astrakhan cap, and Indian boots,
+    he and Lloyd walked, skated, or went sleighing every day.</p>
+
+    <p>His pen was kept busy also. A new novel, "The Master of
+    Ballantrae," was started, and he contributed a series of
+    articles to <i>Scribner's Magazine</i>. For these he was paid a
+    regular sum offered by the publishers and agreed upon in
+    advance&mdash;a new experience. It made him feel "awfu' grand,"
+    he told a Scotch friend.</p>
+
+    <p>A venture he had been longing to make since a boy was a
+    cruise among the islands of the South Seas. While enduring the
+    bitter cold of Saranac such hazy ideas as he had had about such
+    a trip began to form themselves into a definite scheme. He was
+    anxious for a long voyage; perhaps the warm sea air might cure
+    him after all else had failed.</p>
+
+    <p>So night after night he and Lloyd eagerly pored over books
+    and maps, and the family discussed plans for such an
+    expedition.</p>
+
+    <p>When spring came Mrs. Stevenson started for San Francisco to
+    secure, if possible, a yacht in which they might undertake such
+    a cruise. If all went well Louis and his mother and Lloyd would
+    follow.</p>
+
+    <p>While they waited for results they spent the time at
+    Manasquan, on the New Jersey coast. There Stevenson and his son
+    enjoyed the sailing, and their New York friends came often to
+    see them.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Low tells of the day at Manasquan when word was received
+    from Mrs. Stevenson that she had found a schooner-yacht
+    satisfactory for the voyage.</p>
+
+    <p>An answer must be sent at once. Her husband telegraphed that
+    they would come, but it was not without misgivings that he made
+    this final decision. There was much at stake in an uncertain
+    venture of the kind. It meant a sacrifice of comfort for his
+    wife and mother, big expense, and perhaps no better health in
+    the end.</p>
+
+    <p>However, it seemed worth the risk, and having decided to go
+    he began to look forward to the trip with boyish delight. "It
+    will be horrid fun," he said, "to be an invalid gentleman on
+    board a yacht, to walk around with a spy-glass under your arm,
+    to make landings and trade beads and chromos for cocoanuts, and
+    to have the natives swim out to meet you."</p>
+
+    <p>He and Lloyd spent hours laying their course and making out
+    lists of stores with which to furnish the schooner, regardless
+    of the doubt expressed by their friends as to the capacity of
+    the boat. "They calmly proceeded with their interminable lists
+    and scorned the criticism of a mere land-lubber. All
+    conversation that was not of a nautical character failed to
+    hold their interest."</p>
+
+    <p>Cheered with strong hopes for Louis's future, the family
+    departed for San Francisco on the 28th of May, 1888. Their one
+    regret was the good friends they were leaving behind. This
+    particularly affected Louis, but he tried to hide his feelings
+    by making all sorts of lively and impossible proposals for
+    their joining him later on.</p>
+
+    <p>His parting words to Mr. Low were: "There's England over
+    there&mdash;and I've left it&mdash;perhaps I may never go
+    back&mdash;and there on the other side of this big continent
+    there's another sea rolling in. I loved the Pacific in the days
+    when I was at Monterey, and perhaps now it will love me a
+    little. I am going to meet it; ever since I was a boy the South
+    Seas have laid a spell upon me."</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII"
+       id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+    <h3>IN THE SOUTH SEAS</h3>
+
+    <p class="poem">"Since long ago, a child at home,
+    <br>
+     I read and longed to rise and roam,
+    <br>
+     Where'er I went, what'er I willed,
+    <br>
+     One promised land my fancy filled.
+    <br>
+     Hence the long road my home I made;
+    <br>
+     Tossed much in ships; have often laid
+    <br>
+     Below the uncurtained sky my head,
+    <br>
+     Rain-deluged and wind buffeted;
+    <br>
+     And many a thousand miles I crossed,
+    <br>
+     And corners turned&mdash;love's labor lost,
+    <br>
+     Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
+    <br>
+     I came, not hoping, and like one
+    <br>
+     Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
+    <br>
+     And hailed my promised land with cries."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>Once, while Louis was a discontented student at the
+    University of Edinburgh, the premier of New Zealand, Mr. Seed,
+    spent an evening with his father and talked about the South Sea
+    Islands until the boy said he was "sick with desire to go
+    there."</p>
+
+    <p>From that time on a visit to that out-of-the-way corner of
+    the earth was a cherished dream, and he read everything he
+    could lay hands on that told about it.</p>
+
+    <p>While in California, the first time, Mr. Virgil Williams, an
+    artist, aroused his interest still more by the accounts of his
+    own trip in the South Seas.</p>
+
+    <p>Now his opportunity to see them had actually come. He
+    already knew much of the kind of places and people they were
+    going among.</p>
+
+    <p>Three thousand miles across the open sea lay the Marquesas
+    Islands, the first group they hoped to visit, and it was for
+    that port their schooner, the <i>Casco</i>, turned her head
+    when she was towed out of the Golden Gate at dawn on the 28th
+    of June.</p>
+
+    <p>Besides the family and a servant, Valentine Roch, who had
+    been with them since Bournemouth days, the party consisted of
+    the skipper, Captain Otis, who was well acquainted with the
+    Pacific, a crew of four deck-hands, and a Japanese cook.</p>
+
+    <p>The <i>Casco</i> was a fore-and-aft schooner, ninety-five
+    feet in length, of seventy tons' burden. "She had most graceful
+    lines and with her lofty masts, white sails and decks, and
+    glittering brass work, was a lovely craft to the eye as she sat
+    upon the water."</p>
+
+    <p>"I must try to describe the vessel that is to be our home
+    for so long," Mrs. Stevenson, senior, wrote to her sister at
+    Colinton. "From the deck you step down into the cockpit, which
+    is our open air drawing room. It has seats all around, nicely
+    cushioned, and we sit or lie there most of the day. The compass
+    is there, and the wheel, so the man at the wheel always keeps
+    us company.... At the bottom of the stairs on the right hand
+    side is the captain's room. Straight ahead is the main&mdash;or
+    after&mdash;cabin, a nice bright place with a skylight and four
+    portholes. There are four sofas that can be turned into beds if
+    need be, and there are lockers under them in which our clothes
+    are stored away. Above and behind each sofa is a berth
+    concealed by white lace curtains on brass rods, and in these
+    berths we three women are laid away as on shelves each night to
+    sleep.</p>
+
+    <p>"Opposite the entrance is a mirror let into the wall, with
+    two small shelves under it. On each side of this is a door. The
+    one to the right leads ... to Lloyd's cabin, and beyond that
+    again is the forward cabin, or dining room. The door to the
+    left opens into ... Louis' sleeping-room. It is very roomy with
+    both a bed and a sofa in it, so that he will be very
+    comfortable....</p>
+
+    <p>"The dining room has a long table and chairs. Between the
+    doors a very ugly picture of fruit and cake. Louis would fain
+    cover it up if we could spare a flag with which to do it. The
+    doors at the further end lead to the pantry and galley and
+    beyond these are the men's quarters."</p>
+
+    <p>No expense had been spared in building the <i>Casco</i> to
+    make her comfortable. She was intended, however, for cruising
+    in the California waters and was hardly suited to the rough
+    handling she received during the squally weather of the next
+    few months. Fortunately she stood the test well and her
+    passengers suffered few discomforts.</p>
+
+    <p>Once under way and settled for living, the trip proved quite
+    uneventful. The long days were spent on deck reading or
+    working, and Stevenson began to gather material for a book on
+    the South Seas. The ship's life suited him admirably; every
+    strange fish and new star interested him, and he grew stronger
+    hourly in the warm air.</p>
+
+    <p>"Since the fifth day," he wrote, "we were left behind by a
+    full-rigged English ship ... bound round the Horn, we have not
+    spied a sail, nor a land bird, nor a shred of sea-weed. In
+    impudent isolation, the toy schooner has plowed her path of
+    snow across the empty deep, far from all track of commerce, far
+    from any hand of help; now to the sound of slatting sails and
+    stamping sheet blocks, staggering in the turmoil of that
+    business falsely called a calm, now, in the assault of squalls
+    burying her lee-rail in the sea.... Flying fish, a skimming
+    silver rain on the blue sea; a turtle fast asleep in the early
+    morning sunshine; the Southern Cross hung thwart the
+    forerigging like the frame of a wrecked kite&mdash;the pole
+    star and the familiar plough dropping ever lower in the wake;
+    these build up thus far the history of our voyage. It is
+    singular to come so far and see so infinitely little."</p>
+
+    <p>The squalls that came very quickly, frequently broke the
+    monotony of the trip. One moment the <i>Casco</i> would be
+    sailing along easily and the "next moment, the inhabitants of
+    the cabin were piled one upon another, the sea was pouring into
+    the cockpit and spouting in fountains through forgotten
+    deadlights, and the steersman stood spinning the wheel for his
+    life in a halo of tropical rain."</p>
+
+    <p>After twenty-two days at sea they sighted their first
+    island, Nukahiva, one of the Marquesan group, and were all on
+    deck before dawn anxiously watching for it. They not only
+    looked forward eagerly to the sight of land again after so many
+    days on the open ocean, but it was indeed an adventure to come
+    to a country totally strange to all of them, where few white
+    people had been before.</p>
+
+    <p>"Not one soul aboard the Casco had set foot upon the
+    Islands," says Stevenson, "or knew except by accident one word
+    of any of the island tongues; and it was with something perhaps
+    of the same anxious pleasure as thrilled the bosom of the
+    discoverers that we drew near these problematic shores.</p>
+
+    <p>"Before yet the anchor plunged a canoe was already paddling
+    from the hamlet. It contained two men: one white, one brown and
+    tattooed across the face with bands of blue, both immaculate
+    with white European clothes.... Canoe followed canoe till the
+    ship swarmed with stalwart, six foot men in every stage of
+    undress ... the more considerable tattooed from head to foot in
+    awful patterns ... all talking and we could not understand one
+    word; all trying to trade with us who had no thought of
+    trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably
+    absurd."</p>
+
+    <p>All this charmed and delighted Stevenson, who had dreamed
+    many times of witnessing just such a scene. He wrote to Cummie
+    that he was living all over again many of the stories she had
+    read to him and found them coming true about himself.</p>
+
+    <p>For six weeks they cruised about among these islands,
+    frequently dropping anchor and going ashore for several days.
+    When the natives were convinced that they had neither come to
+    trade or to make trouble, but were simply interested in them
+    and their country, they made the visitors most welcome and
+    showered presents of fruit, mats, baskets, and fans upon
+    them.</p>
+
+    <p>All were eager to visit the schooner, which they called
+    <i>Pahi Mani</i>, meaning the shining or the silver ship. The
+    chiefs tried to measure its dimensions with their arms. The
+    liveliest curiosity was shown about everything; the red velvet
+    cushions, the looking-glasses, and the typewriter pleased
+    particularly. A photograph of Queen Victoria hung in the
+    fore-cabin and was always described to the island callers as
+    <i>Vahine Haka-iki Beritano</i>, which meant literally,
+    woman-great-chief Britain. It was a surprise to find how much
+    many of them already knew about her.</p>
+
+    <p>Some afternoons the <i>Casco</i> swarmed with these strange
+    visitors who were always delighted at the refreshments of
+    ship's biscuits and pineapple syrup and water offered them. A
+    certain chief was particularly taken with a pair of gloves
+    belonging to Mrs. Stevenson, senior. He smelled of them, called
+    them British tattooing, and insisted on her putting them on and
+    off a great many times.</p>
+
+    <p>The entire family fell quickly into the island mode of
+    living; dressed as the white inhabitants did; ate all the
+    strange kinds of native food; and when ashore lived in the
+    native houses, which resembled bird-cages on stilts. The
+    climate suited them to perfection, and Stevenson particularly
+    benefited by it, bathing daily in the warm surf and taking long
+    walks along the beach in search of strange shells.</p>
+
+    <p>"Here we are," his mother wrote to Cummie, "in a little bay
+    surrounded by green mountains, on which sheep are grazing, and
+    there are birds very like our own 'blackies' singing in the
+    trees. If it were not for the groves of cocoanut palms, we
+    might almost fancy ourselves in our own dear land. But the
+    climate here is simply perfect. Of course it is hot, but there
+    are always fresh breezes.... We have our principal meal at
+    twelve o'clock, and spend the after part of the day on shore
+    ... bathing, gathering shells, knitting, or reading. Our
+    Japanese cook and steward just sets out the table with cold
+    meats, fruit, and cake so that we can take our other meal at
+    any time in the evening that suits us.</p>
+
+    <p>"Fanny and I are dressed like natives, in two garments. As
+    we have to wade to and from the boat in landing and coming
+    back, we discard stockings, and on the sands we usually go
+    barefoot entirely. Louis wears only a shirt and trousers with
+    the legs and arms rolled up as far as they will go, and he is
+    always barefooted. You will therefore not be surprised to hear
+    that we are all as red as lobsters. It is a strange
+    irresponsible half savage life, and I sometimes wonder if we
+    shall ever be able to return to civilized habits
+    again.</p><a name="image010"
+          id="image010"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image010.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="389"
+             alt="South Sea houses"> <span class="caption">South
+             Sea houses</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"The natives are very simple and kindly people. The Roman
+    Catholic priests have persuaded them to give up their constant
+    wars and the practice of cannibalism, though only within recent
+    years....</p>
+
+    <p>"Louis has learned a good many words of the language, and
+    with the help of signs can contrive to carry on a conversation,
+    but I have stuck fast with two words: '<i>ka-oha</i>' which
+    means 'How do you do?' 'thank you,' and 'good bye,' and I am
+    not quite sure how much else, and '<i>Mitai</i>,' meaning good,
+    nice, pretty, kind. I don't expect to get beyond these, but it
+    is wonderful how much one can express with them....</p>
+
+    <p>"The natives have got names for us all. Louis was at first
+    'the old man,' much to his distress; but now they call him
+    '<i>Ona</i>' meaning owner of the yacht, a name he greatly
+    prefers to the first. Fanny is <i>Vahine</i>, or wife; I am the
+    <i>old woman</i>, and Lloyd rejoices in the name of <i>Maté
+    Karahi</i>, the young man with glass eyes (spectacles). Perhaps
+    it is a compliment here to be called old, as it is in China, at
+    any rate, one native told Louis that he himself was old, but
+    his mother was not!...</p>
+
+    <p>"A native dance was got up for our benefit. None of the
+    dancing-women appeared, but five men dressed in shirt and
+    trousers, danced together with spirit and grace. The music was
+    provided by a drum, made out of an old tin box. Many of the
+    steps reminded me of a Highland reel, but were curiously mixed
+    up with calisthenic, and even gymnastic exercises; the hands in
+    particular were used very gracefully, and they often took off
+    their hats and waved them to and fro. But they also climbed on
+    each other's shoulders, and did other strange things. After
+    dancing for some time, they sang songs to us in a curious, low,
+    weird kind of crooning. Altogether it was a strange sort of
+    afternoon party!"</p>
+
+    <p>The Marquesas Islands belong to the French, and the
+    commandant in charge was most cordial to Stevenson, inviting
+    him to his house frequently during his stay in the islands.
+    When at the expiration of six weeks it was time for the
+    <i>Casco</i> to weigh anchor and the party sailed on to explore
+    still farther, they left behind them many friends who regretted
+    their departure. Here as elsewhere in the South Seas, Stevenson
+    showed his sympathy and kindliness toward the island people
+    regardless of who they were or their rank. White or half-caste
+    priest, missionary, or trader, all were treated the same. No
+    bribe, he said, would induce him to call the natives
+    savages.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Johnstone, an English resident in the South Seas at the
+    time of Stevenson's visit, says: "His inborn courtesy more than
+    any of his other good traits, endeared him to his fellows in
+    the Pacific ... in the hearts of our Island people he built a
+    monument more lasting than stone or brass."</p>
+
+    <p>The recollection of the history of his own wild Scottish
+    Islands, the people and conditions his grandfather found among
+    them, helped him to understand these people and account for
+    many of their actions. Though at opposite ends of the earth,
+    many of their customs and legends corresponded. The dwellers in
+    the Hebrides in the old days likewise lived in clans with their
+    chief and struggled to retain their independence against an
+    invading power.</p>
+
+    <p>Tahiti, one of the group of Society Islands, was their next
+    stopping place. Before starting a new mate was shipped, who was
+    more familiar with the course, which lay through the Dangerous
+    Archipelago&mdash;a group of low, badly lighted islands.</p>
+
+    <p>The Society Islands are most beautiful, Tahiti probably the
+    gem of them all, but on arriving Stevenson was in no condition
+    to appreciate their loveliness. A cold contracted on the trip
+    made him quite ill. The trip had proved very dangerous even
+    with the aid of a pilot, and twice they gave themselves up for
+    lost when they were becalmed and drifted in toward the shore.
+    "The reefs were close in," wrote Stevenson, "with my eye! What
+    a surf! The pilot thought we were gone and the captain had a
+    boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue."</p>
+
+    <p>After landing his condition became so much worse his wife
+    grew desperate and determined to find a comfortable spot for
+    him. After much trouble a Chinaman with a team was secured, who
+    agreed to drive the entire family to Tautira, the largest
+    village, sixteen miles away over a road crossed by no less than
+    twenty-one streams. On this uncertain venture they started,
+    with the head of the family in a state of collapse, knowing
+    nothing of the village they were going to or the living it
+    would afford them.</p>
+
+    <p>None of them ever regretted the perseverance which led them
+    on, however, for in all their wanderings in the South Seas
+    before or after no place ever charmed them more, or were they
+    received with greater hospitality than in Tautira.</p>
+
+    <p>The day after their arrival, Moe, an island princess and an
+    ex-queen, visited them. When she found Stevenson ill she
+    insisted he and his family be moved to her own house where they
+    could have more comforts. The house at the time was occupied by
+    Ori, a subchief, a subject and relative of the princess. But he
+    and his family gladly turned out to make room for the visitors
+    and lived in a tiny house near by.</p>
+
+    <p>"Ori is the very finest specimen of native we have seen
+    yet," wrote Mrs. Stevenson. "He is several inches over six
+    feet, of perfect though almost gigantic proportions."</p>
+
+    <p>As soon as her husband was strong enough to be about again
+    he and Ori became great friends. Finally, according to an
+    island custom, Stevenson was adopted into Ori's clan and became
+    his brother. This likewise meant exchanging names and Ori
+    became Rui, the nearest possible approach to Louis since there
+    is no L or S in the Tahitian language. Louis in turn became
+    Teriitera (pronounced Ter<i>ee</i>terah), which was Ori's
+    Christian name, Ori standing merely for his clan title.</p>
+
+    <p>To show their gratitude for the hospitality shown them by
+    Ori and the people of the village, Stevenson decided to give a
+    public feast.</p>
+
+    <p>The feast day was set for Wednesday, and the previous Sunday
+    a chief issued the invitations from the Farehau, a house
+    resembling an enormous bird-cage in the centre of the village,
+    from which all the news was read aloud to the people once a
+    week.</p>
+
+    <p>A feast of such size necessitated much preparation.</p>
+
+    <p>"The chief, who was our guide in the matter," wrote Mrs.
+    Stevenson, "found four large fat hogs, which Louis bought, and
+    four cases of ship's biscuit were sent over from the Casco,
+    which is lying at Papeete for repairs.... Our hogs were killed
+    in the morning, washed in the sea, and roasted whole in a pit
+    with hot stones. When done they were laid on their stomachs in
+    neat open coffins of green basket work, each hog with his case
+    of biscuits beside him. Early in the morning the entire
+    population began bathing, a bath being the preliminary to
+    everything. At about three o'clock&mdash;four was the hour
+    set&mdash;there was a general movement toward our premises, so
+    that I had to hurry Louis into his clothes, all white even to
+    his shoes. Lloyd was also in white, but barefoot.... The chief,
+    who speaks French very well, stood beside Louis to interpret
+    for him. By the time we had taken our respective places on the
+    veranda in front of our door, an immense crowd had assembled.
+    They came in five detachments.... Each set of people came
+    bending under the weight of bamboo poles laden with fruits,
+    figs, fowls, etc. All were dressed in their gayest and many had
+    wreaths of leaves or flowers on their heads. The prettiest
+    sight of all was the children, who came marching two and two
+    abreast, the bamboo poles lying lengthwise across their
+    shoulders.</p>
+
+    <p>"When all the offerings had been piled in five great heaps
+    upon the ground, Louis made his oration to the accompaniment of
+    the squealing of pigs, the cackling of hens, and the roar of
+    the surf.... A speech was made in return on behalf of the
+    village.... Each speaker finished by coming forward with one of
+    the smaller things in his hand, which he offered personally to
+    Louis, and then shook hands with us all and retired. Among
+    these smaller presents were many fish-hooks for large fishing,
+    laboriously carved from mother-of-pearl shell. One man came
+    with one egg in each hand saying 'carry these to Scotland with
+    you, let them hatch into cocks, and their song shall remind you
+    of Tautira.' The schoolmaster, with a leaf-basket of rose
+    apples, made his speech in French."</p>
+
+    <p>While overhauling the <i>Casco</i> two or three days before
+    they planned to leave Tautira, Captain Otis was shocked to find
+    the whole upper half of the main masthead completely eaten out
+    by dry-rot. This necessitated taking the schooner around to
+    Papeete, on the other side of the island, for repairs. Under
+    ordinary circumstances the setting of a new masthead need to
+    have delayed them but a few days; in the South Seas, however,
+    it was a different matter. Only after searching for days in
+    Papeete was he able to find a man who knew anything of
+    ship-carpentering, and when found he worked according to his
+    own sweet will. So it was five weeks before the <i>Casco</i>
+    was ready to return for her passengers, who in the meantime
+    were in a state of anxiety as to her whereabouts.</p>
+
+    <p>During their enforced stay Ori treated the entire family
+    like a brother indeed, doing everything in his power to make
+    their visit pleasant.</p>
+
+    <p>At last, on Christmas Day, they were ready to depart. The
+    entire population of Tautira came to the beach to bid them
+    farewell, and as the <i>Casco</i> swung out of the harbor one
+    of the French officials fired a salute of twenty-one guns with
+    his army rifle and the schooner returned it with a
+    heavy-tongued Winchester.</p>
+
+    <p>Tautira had grown to seem like a real home to all of them.
+    To leave it with very little hope of ever returning to see such
+    good friends as Princess Moe and Ori was a real grief, while
+    they in their turn were quite heart-broken. Stevenson's
+    friendship had brought something into their lives they had
+    never had before.</p>
+
+    <p>Honolulu was the goal of the <i>Casco</i> now, and all
+    eagerly looked forward to the letters waiting for them
+    there&mdash;the first word from home since leaving San
+    Francisco.</p>
+
+    <p>Bad weather attended the <i>Casco</i> all the way. They were
+    delayed by a succession of hurricanes and calms until the
+    supply of food ran very low and they were reduced to a diet of
+    "salt-horse" and ship-biscuit.</p>
+
+    <p>The last forty-eight hours of their run was made in the very
+    teeth of a furious gale when the captain took big risks by
+    carrying full sail, with the hope of making port before their
+    supply of food and water was entirely exhausted. In spite of
+    the danger, Stevenson enjoyed this daring run hugely. Later,
+    when he and Lloyd wrote "The Wrecker" together, this very
+    episode figured in the story, Captain Otis under the name of
+    Captain Nares performing a similar sail-carrying feat on the
+    schooner <i>Norah Creina</i>.</p>
+
+    <p>Mrs. Strong, Stevenson's stepdaughter, and her family were
+    waiting in Honolulu and gave them a warm welcome. The
+    travellers soon found themselves the centre of interest among
+    Mrs. Strong's large circle of friends and it was with
+    difficulty Stevenson found time to finish the last chapters of
+    "The Master of Ballantrae," which he had been working on since
+    leaving Saranac.</p>
+
+    <p>Honolulu, with its street-cars, shops, electric lights, and
+    mixture of native and foreign population, seemed strangely
+    crowded and modern after the scenes they had recently left; too
+    modern by far to suit Stevenson, who preferred the
+    unconventional wild life of the islands they had come from.</p>
+
+    <p>At the Royal Palace in Honolulu, Kalakaua, the last of the
+    Hawaiian kings, still held court. He enjoyed R.L.S. and invited
+    him often to the palace and told him the history and legends of
+    many of the islands of the South Seas. It was from Kalakaua he
+    first learned to know the troubled history of the Samoan
+    Islands and of Apia, which was to be his future home.</p>
+
+    <p>The Island of Molokai, the leper colony, lay not far off.
+    While in Honolulu he spent several days there, in the place
+    where Father Damien had lately done his splendid work.</p>
+
+    <p>According to their original scheme they were to return home
+    from Honolulu, but having come so far they were eager to see
+    more. They had tasted the dangers and fascination of the life
+    among the wild islands, each so different, and it had only
+    whetted their appetites for what lay still beyond. The chances
+    of coming so far again were slight; it seemed too good an
+    opportunity to miss. So Stevenson wrote to the friends at home,
+    whom he longed daily to see: "Yes&mdash;I own up&mdash;I am
+    untrue to friendship and (what is less, but still considerable)
+    to civilization. I am not coming home for another year.... But
+    look here and judge me tenderly. I have had more fun and
+    pleasure of my life these past months than ever before, and
+    more health than any time in ten long years.... And this
+    precious deep is filled with islands which we may still visit,
+    and though the sea is a dreadful place, I like to be there, and
+    like squalls (when they are over) and to draw near to a new
+    island I can not say how much I like....</p>
+
+    <p>"Remember me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing
+    and walking about, as jolly as a sand boy; you will own the
+    temptation is strong; and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents,
+    is bound to pay into the bargain, sooner or later, it seems it
+    would be madness to come home now, with an imperfect book ...
+    and perhaps fall sick again by autumn.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is a singular thing that as I was packing up old papers
+    ere I left Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken
+    Highland sibyl, when I was sixteen. She said I was to be very
+    happy,&mdash;to visit America and <i>to be much upon the
+    sea</i>.... I can not say why I like the sea ... my poor
+    grandfather it is from him I inherit the taste I fancy, and he
+    was around many islands in his day; but I, please God, shall
+    beat him at that before the recall is sounded."</p>
+
+    <p>So the <i>Casco</i> was shipped back to San Francisco, Mrs.
+    Stevenson, senior, returned to Scotland for a visit, and the
+    trading schooner <i>Equator</i> was chartered for a trip among
+    the Marshall, Gilbert, and Samoan Islands.</p>
+
+    <p>Just before leaving, the following letter came from Ori,
+    which Stevenson says he would rather have received than written
+    "Red Gauntlet" or the "Sixth Æneid."</p>
+
+    <p>"I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you
+    left us, I was filled with tears; my wife Rui Telime, also, and
+    all my household. When you embarked I felt great sorrow. It is
+    for this that I went upon the road, and you looked from that
+    ship, and I looked at you on the ship with great grief until
+    you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sail. When the ship
+    started I ran along the beach to see you still; and when you
+    were in the open sea I cried out to you 'Farewell Louis,' and
+    when I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice
+    crying, 'Rui, farewell.' Afterwards I watched the ship as long
+    as I could until the night fell; and when it was dark I said to
+    myself: 'If I had wings I should fly to the ship to meet
+    you,'... I wept then ... telling myself continually, 'Teriitera
+    returns to his own country and leaves his dear Rui in
+    grief.'... I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the
+    thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my Teriitera makes
+    the only riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I
+    desire to see again. It must be that your body and my body
+    shall eat together at one table, there is what would make my
+    heart content. But now we are separated. May God be with you
+    all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you may be
+    well and we also, according to the words of Paul.</p>
+
+    <p>"O<font size="-1">RI A ORI</font>, that is to say,
+    R<font size="-1">UI</font>."</p>
+
+    <p>"All told," said Stevenson, "if my books have enabled or
+    helped me to make this voyage, to know Rui, and to have
+    received such a letter, they have ... not been writ in
+    vain."</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX"
+       id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+    <h3>VAILIMA</h3>
+
+    <p class="blockquot">"We thank Thee for this place in which we
+    dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us
+    this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the
+    health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our
+    lives delightful, for the friends in all parts of the earth,
+    and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle.... Give us
+    courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends,
+    soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our
+    innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us strength to
+    encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril,
+    constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes
+    of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving
+    one to another." R.L.S.</p>
+
+    <p class="blockquot"><span style=
+    "text-align: right;">&mdash;<i>Prayer used with the household
+    at Vailima</i>.</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <p>On the 7th of December, when the family landed at Upolu, the
+    chief of the Samoas or Samoan Islands, they little dreamed it
+    was to be their home for the next four years and the last the
+    master of the house was ever to know.</p>
+
+    <p>It had been frequently borne upon Stevenson, however, while
+    cruising among the Marshall and Gilbert Islands during the past
+    months, that a home in either England or Scotland again was a
+    vain dream for him.</p>
+
+    <p>"I do not ask for health," he said, "but I will go anywhere
+    and live in any place where I can enjoy the existence of a
+    human being." He seldom complained and it is rare to find even
+    the brave sort of cry he made against fate to a friend at this
+    time.</p>
+
+    <p>"For fourteen years I have not had a day's real health. I
+    have wakened sick and gone to bed weary, and I have done my
+    work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of
+    it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn
+    by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness, and for so
+    long, it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my
+    glove. I am better now, have been, rightly speaking, since I
+    first came to the Pacific; and still few are the days when I am
+    not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on&mdash;ill
+    or well, is a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest,
+    and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield shall be this
+    dingy inglorious one of the bed and the physics bottle."</p>
+
+    <p>Here in the tropics he might hope to live and work years
+    longer&mdash;a return to a cold climate, he now knew, would be
+    fatal.</p>
+
+    <p>Why not turn traders? Often on starry nights, drifting among
+    the low islands, he and Lloyd and the captain of the
+    <i>Equator</i> had lain out on deck and planned what a lark it
+    would be to buy a schooner, cruise among the islands, and trade
+    with the natives. They would write stories, too, about these
+    strange island dwellers with their many weird superstitions and
+    of the white men who drifted from all corners of the globe to
+    make their home there.</p>
+
+    <p>Already Captain Reid had told them many such tales which
+    Stevenson wove into stories. The "Beach of Falesá" and the
+    "Isle of Voices" are probably the two most famous, while "the
+    strange story of the loss of the brigantine Wandering Minstrel
+    and what men and ships do in that wild and beautiful world
+    beyond the American continent" formed a plot for the story
+    called "The Wrecker," which he and Lloyd Osbourne wrote
+    together later on.</p>
+
+    <p>Samoa was a place he was eager to visit. King Kalakaua at
+    Honolulu had already told him much of its troubled history. The
+    group of thirteen islands lay about four thousand two hundred
+    miles southwest of San Francisco. At that time they were under
+    the control of England, Germany, and the United States
+    according to a treaty entered into in 1889. These countries
+    appointed a chief justice, a president of the municipal
+    council, three consuls, and three land commissioners. A native
+    king was likewise recognized on each island.</p>
+
+    <p>This triple control proved most unsatisfactory and for years
+    past there had been constant friction among the officials and
+    warlike outbreaks among the natives.</p>
+
+    <p>These complications interested Stevenson. His first idea had
+    been to stop there but a short time. He now found he wanted to
+    remain in Samoa long enough to write its history.</p>
+
+    <p>The Samoans are true Polynesians; a strong and handsome race
+    whose reputation is high among all the people of the Pacific.
+    The large majority have become Christians, but in spite of the
+    influence of the missionaries and the foreign powers who
+    control them, they retain many of their old customs and habits.
+    They are naturally peace-loving in spite of their many wars.
+    Fighting does not appeal to them for its own sake, and they
+    enjoy a good family life, treating their women with great
+    respect and lavishing affection upon their children.</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson wanted those at home to know these people better;
+    his sympathy, which was ever with the weaker side, was
+    instantly aroused in behalf of the natives, and he wanted to
+    tell their side of the story.</p>
+
+    <p>If they were to make a home anywhere in the South Seas there
+    could be no better spot than Apia, the principal port and
+    capital of these islands, as it had a good mail service, a most
+    important feature to a writer. The monthly mail-steamers
+    between San Francisco and Sydney, as well as other Australian
+    mail-boats, stopped there.</p>
+
+    <p>So he purchased four hundred acres on the hills three miles
+    from Apia and preparations were immediately made for clearing
+    the ground and building a house. Lloyd Osbourne left for
+    England to bring back the household treasures from Skerryvore,
+    to make a real home, and Stevenson and his wife lived gypsy
+    fashion meanwhile in a four-room wooden house.</p>
+
+    <p>The new home was named Vailima, which is Samoan for "Five
+    Waters," there being five streams running through the
+    property.</p>
+
+    <p>The house was built of wood, painted dark green with a red
+    roof. When finished its chief feature was the great hall
+    within, sixty feet long, lined and ceiled with California
+    redwood. Here among the home treasures&mdash;his own portrait,
+    war dresses, corselets, fans, and mats presented to him by
+    island kings&mdash;the marble bust of grandfather Stevenson
+    smiled down with approval on many a motley gathering. Louis
+    often wondered if they reminded the old gentleman of some of
+    the strange people he had entertained years ago in Baxter
+    Place.</p>
+
+    <p>All about was dense, tropical undergrowth, only paths led to
+    the house, and these must continually be cut out. All carrying
+    was done by two big New Zealand pack-horses.</p>
+
+    <p>A large garden was planted&mdash;Mrs. Stevenson's special
+    hobby. Cocoanuts, oranges, guavas, and mangoes already grew on
+    the estate. The ground was very fertile, and kava, the root of
+    which is used for the Samoan national drink, pineapples, sweet
+    potatoes, and eggplants were soon flourishing among other
+    things. Limes were so plentiful that they formed the hedge
+    about the place; citrons were so common that they rotted on the
+    trees.</p><a name="image011"
+          id="image011"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image011.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="384"
+             alt="The house at Vailima"> <span class="caption">The
+             house at Vailima</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>All this ground-breaking, house-building, and gardening were
+    new to Stevenson, and he revelled in them to the neglect of his
+    writing.</p>
+
+    <p>"This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life we lead
+    now," he wrote to Sidney Colvin. "Our place is in a deep cleft
+    of Væa Mountain; some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered
+    in forest, which is our strangling enemy, and which we combat
+    with axes and dollars. I am crazy over outdoor work, and had at
+    last to confine myself to the house, or literature must have
+    gone by the board. <i>Nothing</i> is so interesting as weeding,
+    clearing, and pathmaking; the oversight of laborers becomes a
+    disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and
+    it does make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud
+    and drenched with sweat and rain after some hours in the bush,
+    change, rub down, and take a chair in the verandah, is to taste
+    a quiet conscience."</p>
+
+    <p>Before his arrival in Apia, Stevenson's tale of "The Bottle
+    Imp" had been translated into Samoan by the missionaries. When
+    the natives discovered he was its author they immediately named
+    him Tusitala, The Teller-of-Tales. He still owned the bottle,
+    they said; it was that gave him the wealth to cruise about in a
+    great boat and build a fine house. The family often wondered
+    why native visitors were curious to see the inside of the great
+    safe in the hall at Vailima until they found that it was the
+    belief among the islanders that the safe was the bottle's
+    hiding-place.</p>
+
+    <p>Mrs. Stevenson, senior, returned with Lloyd from England,
+    and later Mrs. Strong and her small son, Austin, came from
+    Honolulu to make the family complete.</p>
+
+    <p>The servants were all natives, "boys" as they called
+    themselves. There were usually about half a dozen about the
+    house, with a boy for the garden and to look after the cows and
+    pigs, besides a band of outside laborers, varying from half a
+    dozen to thirty, under Lloyd's direction.</p>
+
+    <p>Sosimo was Stevenson's particular boy. He waited upon him
+    hand and foot, looked after his clothes and his pony "Jack,"
+    and was devoted in every way. His loyalty to his master lasted
+    to the end of his own life.</p>
+
+    <p>The servants were governed on something very like the clan
+    system. A Vailima tartan was adopted for special occasions and
+    Stevenson encouraged them to think of the household as a
+    family, to take interest and pride in all its doings.</p>
+
+    <p>On Sunday evenings the entire household was assembled. A
+    chapter of the Samoan Bible was read and Samoan hymns sung.
+    Then a prayer in English written by Stevenson was read,
+    concluding with the Lord's Prayer in Samoan.</p>
+
+    <p>If the master had cause to be displeased with any one of
+    them, they were all summoned and reprimanded or fined.</p>
+
+    <p>His stories delighted them. They were never tired of looking
+    at the picture of Skerryvore Light and hearing about the rugged
+    coasts of Tusitala's native island and of his father and
+    grandfather who built lighthouses. The latter impressed them
+    greatly, since building of any kind in Samoa is considered a
+    fine art. The deeds of General Gordon, the Indian Mutiny, and
+    Lucknow were likewise favorite tales when Tusitala showed them
+    a treasure he prized highly: a message written by General
+    Gordon from Khartoum. It was in Arabic on a small piece of
+    cigarette-paper which might be easily swallowed should the
+    messenger be captured. Stevenson always believed it to be the
+    last message sent before the great general's death.</p>
+
+    <p>They came to him for everything and he was ever ready with
+    help and advice. They were quick to appreciate his justice and
+    kindliness, and to a man were devoted to him. "Once Tusitala's
+    friend, always Tusitala's friend," they said.</p>
+
+    <p>With his customary energy he threw himself heart and soul
+    for a time into the political troubles of the island, making
+    himself the champion of the natives' cause. He wrote a series
+    of letters to the papers at home stating his idea of the
+    injustice shown the Samoans under their present government. It
+    was a most delicate situation, and at times led to very
+    strained relations between himself and the officials in
+    Apia.</p>
+
+    <p>Those at home wondered why Stevenson tampered with island
+    politics at all. Why did he not simply leave them to the powers
+    in charge?</p>
+
+    <p>His answer was, he had made Samoa his home, the Samoans were
+    his people, and he could not fail to resent any injustice shown
+    them.</p>
+
+    <p>Lloyd Osbourne says: "He was consulted on every imaginable
+    subject.... Government chiefs and rebels consulted him with
+    regard to policy; political letters were brought to him to read
+    and criticise.... Parties would come to hear the latest news of
+    the proposed disarming of the country, or to arrange a private
+    audience with one of the officials; and poor war-worn
+    chieftains, whose only anxiety was to join the winning side and
+    who wished to consult with Tusitala as to which that might be.
+    Mr. Stevenson would sigh sometimes as he saw these stately
+    folks crossing the lawn in single file, their attendants
+    following behind with presents and baskets, but he never failed
+    to meet or hear them."</p>
+
+    <p>He aided one party of chieftains in prison, and to show
+    their gratitude on regaining their freedom they cleared and dug
+    a splendid road leading to his house. All the labor and expense
+    they bore themselves, which amounted to no small matter. Ala
+    Loto Alofa, they called it, the Road of the Loving Hearts.</p>
+
+    <p>Warlike outbreaks were not infrequent near Vailima. The
+    woods were often full of scouting parties and the roll of drums
+    could be heard. One day as Stevenson and Mrs. Strong were
+    writing together they were interrupted by a war party crossing
+    the lawn. Mrs. Strong asked: "Louis, have we a pistol or gun in
+    the house that will shoot?" and he answered cheerfully without
+    stopping his work: "No, but we have friends on both sides."</p>
+
+    <p>With all their political differences he and the officials
+    retained friendly feeling. He paid calls on them at Apia and
+    attended various town gatherings, while they were often
+    entertained at Vailima.</p>
+
+    <p>Always hospitable, it was a delight to him now to keep open
+    house. Not only the chief justice, the consuls, the doctor, the
+    missionaries, and the traders were in the habit of dropping in
+    to Vailima, but from every ship that docked at Apia came some
+    visitor who was anxious to meet Stevenson and his family; from
+    the war-ships came the officers and sailors.</p>
+
+    <p>The bluejackets were always particularly welcome. Mrs.
+    Strong tells of a party who came from H.M.S. <i>Wallaroo</i> on
+    one Thanksgiving Day, when "the kitchen department was in great
+    excitement over that foreign bird the turkey" and all was
+    confusion. "But Louis kept his sailors on all the afternoon. He
+    took them over the house and showed them ... the curiosities
+    from the islands, the big picture of Skerryvore lighthouse,...
+    the treasured bit of Gordon's handwriting from Khartoum, in
+    Arabic letters on a cigarette paper,... and the library, where
+    the Scotchmen gathered about an old edition of Burns, with a
+    portrait. Louis gave a volume of Underwoods (Stevenson's poems)
+    with an inscription to Grant, the one who hailed from
+    Edinburgh, and the man carried it carefully wrapped in his
+    handkerchief. They went away waving their hats and keeping
+    step."</p>
+
+    <p>A croquet-ground and tennis-court were laid out, and Vailima
+    was the scene of balls, dinners, and parties of all kinds. No
+    birthday or holiday, English, American, or Samoan, was allowed
+    to pass unnoticed, and the natives were included in these
+    festivities whenever possible.</p>
+
+    <p>The first Christmas at Vailima they had a party for the
+    children who had never before seen a Christmas tree.</p>
+
+    <p>Tusitala's birthday was always a special event to his island
+    friends. The feast was served in native style; all seated about
+    on the floor. Rather large gatherings they must have been, to
+    judge from Mrs. Strong's account. "We had sixteen pigs roasted
+    whole underground, three enormous fish (small whales, Lloyd
+    called them), four hundred pounds of beef, ditto of pork, 200
+    heads of taro, great bunches of bananas, native delicacies done
+    up in bundles of <i>ti</i> leaves, 800 pineapples, many
+    weighing fifteen pounds, all from Lloyd's patch. Among the
+    presents for Tusitala, besides flowers and wreaths, were fans,
+    native baskets ... and cocoanut cups beautifully
+    polished."</p><a name="image012"
+          id="image012"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image012.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="374"
+             alt="A feast of chiefs"> <span class="caption">A feast
+             of chiefs</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>On these occasions the hosts were often entertained with
+    dances and songs. All the Samoans are great singers. They
+    composed songs about everything and everybody, so that one
+    could judge the standing a person held by the songs that were
+    sung about him.</p>
+
+    <p>Those sung at Vailima parties were usually written by one of
+    the house "boys" and "they were danced and acted with great
+    spirit.... Sometimes every member of the family would be
+    represented ... but the central figure, the heart of the song
+    was always Tusitala."</p>
+
+    <p>It is a marvel with the many demands made upon him, his
+    varied interests, and frequent visits to neighboring islands,
+    Stevenson still found time to write stories, poems, prayers,
+    notes of the South Sea Islands, Samoan history, and many, many
+    letters. "It is a life that suits me but absorbs me like an
+    ocean," he said. Through it all his health continued fairly
+    good. He was able to take long tramps and rides that would have
+    been physically impossible two years before.</p>
+
+    <p>Mrs. Strong acted as his secretary and the majority of his
+    writing now was done by dictation. "He generally makes notes
+    early in the morning," she wrote, "which he elaborates as he
+    reads them aloud ... he never falters for a word, but gives me
+    the sentence with capital letters and all the stops as clearly
+    and steadily as though he were reading from an unseen
+    book."</p>
+
+    <p>The two South Sea books occupied much of his time, but it
+    was of his own land and people so far away that he had so
+    little hope of ever seeing again, he loved best to write.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is a singular thing," he wrote to James Barrie, "that I
+    should live here in the South Seas, and yet my imagination so
+    continually inhabit the cold old huddle of grey hills from
+    which we came."</p>
+
+    <p>He finished and sent away further adventures of David
+    Balfour and Alan Breck under the title of "David Balfour." "St.
+    Ives" followed with its scenes laid around Edinburgh Castle,
+    Swanston Cottage, and the Pentland Hills. In his last book,
+    "Weir of Hermiston," the one he left unfinished, broken off in
+    the midst of a word, he roamed the streets of Auld Reekie again
+    with a hero very like what he had once been himself, who was
+    likewise an enthusiastic member of the "Spec."</p>
+
+    <p>Something which pleased him greatly at this time was the
+    news from his friend Charles Baxter in Edinburgh that a
+    complete edition of his works was to be published in the best
+    possible form with a limited number of copies, to be called the
+    "Edinburgh Edition."</p>
+
+    <p>"I suppose it was your idea to give it that name," Stevenson
+    wrote, thanking him. "No other would have affected me in the
+    same manner.... Could a more presumptuous idea have occurred to
+    us in those days when we used to search our pockets for
+    coppers, too often in vain, and combine forces to produce the
+    threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, than that I
+    should be strong and well at the age of forty three in the
+    island of Upolu, and that you should be at home bringing out
+    the 'Edinburgh Edition'?"</p>
+
+    <p>In spite of the many interests in his present life, his love
+    for the people and the country, the yearning for the friends
+    far away grew daily.</p>
+
+    <p>How he longed to have them see Vailima with all its
+    beauties! To talk over old times again. Such visits were
+    continually planned, but they were never realized.</p>
+
+    <p>He seldom complained and those who were with him every day
+    rarely found him low in spirits. It was into the letters to his
+    old intimates that these longings crept when it swept over him
+    that, though a voluntary exile in a pleasant place, he was an
+    exile none the less, with the fate of him who wrote:</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"There's a track across the deep,
+    <br>
+     And a path across the sea,
+    <br>
+     But for me there's nae return
+    <br>
+     To my ain countree."</p>
+
+    <p>"When the smell of the good wet earth" came to him it came
+    "with a kind of Highland tone." A tropic shower found him in a
+    "frame of mind and body that belonged to Scotland." And when he
+    turned to write the chronicle of his grandfather's life and
+    work, the beautiful words in which he described the old
+    gentleman's farewell to "Sumbraugh and the wild crags of Skye"
+    meant likewise his own farewell to those shores. No more was he
+    to "see the topaz and ruby interchange on the summit of Bell
+    Rock," no more to see "the castle on its hills," or the
+    venerable city which he always thought of as his home.</p>
+
+    <p>"Like Leyden," he wrote, "I have gone into a far land to
+    die, not stayed like Burns to mingle in the end with Scottish
+    soil."</p>
+
+    <p>It was drawing near the close of their fourth year in Apia.
+    On November 13 his birthday had been celebrated with the usual
+    festivities, and on Thanksgiving Day he had given a dinner to
+    his American friends&mdash;and then the end of all his
+    wanderings and working came suddenly.</p>
+
+    <p>"He wrote hard all that morning of the last day," says Lloyd
+    Osbourne, "on his half-finished book Hermiston.... In the
+    afternoon the mail fell to be answered; not business
+    correspondence&mdash;but replies to the long, kindly letters of
+    distant friends, received but two days since, and still bright
+    in memory.</p>
+
+    <p>"At sunset he came downstairs.... He was helping his wife on
+    the verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he put both
+    hands to his head, and cried out, 'What's that?' Then he asked
+    quickly, 'Do I look strange?' Even as he did so he fell on his
+    knees beside her. He was helped into the great hall, between
+    his wife and body-servant, Sosimo, losing consciousness
+    instantly, as he lay back in the arm-chair that had once been
+    his grandfather's. Little time was lost in bringing the
+    doctors, Anderson of the man-of-war, and his friend Dr. Funk.
+    They looked at him and shook their heads ... he had passed the
+    bounds of human skill....</p>
+
+    <p>"The dozen and more Samoans that formed part of the clan of
+    which he was chief, sat in a wide semicircle on the floor,
+    their reverent, troubled, sorrow-stricken faces all fixed upon
+    their dying master. Some knelt on one knee to be instantly
+    ready for any command that might be laid upon them....</p>
+
+    <p>"He died at ten minutes past eight on Monday evening the 3rd
+    of December, in the forty-fifth year of his age.</p>
+
+    <p>"The great Union Jack that flew over the house was hauled
+    down and laid over the body, fit shroud for a loyal Scotsman.
+    He lay in the hall which was ever his pride, where he had
+    passed the gayest and most delightful hours of his life.... In
+    it were the treasures of his far off Scottish home.... The
+    Samoans passed in procession beside his bed, kneeling and
+    kissing his hand, each in turn, before taking their places for
+    the long night watch beside him. No entreaty could induce them
+    to retire, to rest themselves for the painful arduous duties of
+    the morrow. It would show little love for Tusitala, they said,
+    if they did not spend their last night beside him. Mournful and
+    silent, they sat in deep dejection, poor, simple, loyal folks,
+    fulfilling the duty that they owed their chief.</p>
+
+    <p>"A messenger was dispatched to a few chiefs connected with
+    the family, to announce the tidings and bid them assemble their
+    men on the morrow for the work there was to do....</p>
+
+    <p>"The morning of the 4th of December broke cool and sunny....
+    A meeting of chiefs was held to apportion the work and divide
+    the men into parties. Forty were sent with knives and axes to
+    cut a path up the steep face of the mountain, and the writer
+    himself led another party to the summit&mdash;men chosen from
+    the immediate family&mdash;to dig the grave on the spot where
+    it was Robert Louis Stevenson's wish that he should lie....
+    Nothing more picturesque can be imagined than the ledge that
+    forms the summit to Væa, a place no wider than a room, and flat
+    as a table. On either side the land descends precipitously; in
+    front lies the vast ocean and surf-swept reefs; to the right
+    and left green mountains rise....</p>
+
+    <p>"All the morning Samoans were arriving with flowers, few of
+    these were white, for they have not learned our foreign custom,
+    and the room glowed with the many colors. There were no
+    strangers on that day, no acquaintances; those only were called
+    who would deeply feel the loss. At one o'clock a body of
+    powerful Samoans bore away the coffin, hid beneath a tattered
+    red ensign that had flown above his vessel in many a remote
+    corner of the South Seas. A path so steep and rugged taxed
+    their strength to the utmost, for not only was the journey
+    difficult in itself, but extreme care was requisite to carry
+    the coffin shoulder high....</p>
+
+    <p>"No stranger hand touched him.... Those who loved him
+    carried him to his last home; even the coffin was the work of
+    an old friend. The grave was dug by his own men."</p>
+
+    <p>Tusitala had left them, and his friends in the South Seas
+    had lost a faithful friend and companion, a wise and just
+    master.</p>
+
+    <p>His family and friends the world over had lost not only
+    these but far more. His life had been a chivalrous one with all
+    the best that chivalry stands for, "loyalty, honesty,
+    generosity, courage, courtesy, and self-devotion; to impute no
+    unworthy motives and to bear no grudges; to bear misfortune
+    with cheerfulness and without a murmur; to strike hard for the
+    right and to take no mean advantage; to be gentle to women and
+    kind to all that are weak; to be rigorous with oneself and very
+    lenient to others&mdash;these ... were the traits that
+    distinguished Stevenson."</p>
+
+    <p>"They do not make life easy as he frequently found."</p>
+
+    <p>His resting-place on the crest of Væa Mountain is covered by
+    a tomb of gray stone. On one side is inscribed in English the
+    verses he had written for his own requiem:</p>
+
+    <table summary="Requiem">
+        <tr>
+            <td align="center">A
+            <br>
+             1850</td>
+
+            <td align="center">ROBERT LOUIS
+            <br>
+             STEVENSON</td>
+
+            <td align="center">&Omega;
+            <br>
+             1894</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td></td>
+
+            <td colspan="1">"Under the wide and starry sky,
+            <br>
+             Dig the grave and let me lie,
+            <br>
+             Glad did I live and gladly die,
+            <br>
+             And I laid me down with a will.
+            <br>
+            <br>
+             "This be the verse you grave for me:
+            <br>
+             Here he lies where he longed to be;
+            <br>
+             Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
+            <br>
+             And the hunter home from the hill."</td>
+
+            <td></td>
+        </tr>
+    </table>
+    <br>
+     <a name="image013"
+          id="image013"></a>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:640px;">
+        <img src="images/image013.jpg"
+             width="640"
+             height="376"
+             alt="The tomb of Stevenson on Væa Mountain">
+             <span class="caption">The tomb of Stevenson
+             on Væa Mountain</span>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>On the other side, written in Samoan and surrounded by
+    carvings of thistles, his native flowers, and the hibiscus
+    flowers, emblem of the South, are the words from the Bible:</p>
+
+    <p class="blockquot">"Whither thou goest I will go, and where
+    thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people; and
+    thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I
+    be buried."</p>
+
+    <p>The Samoan chiefs have forbidden the use of firearms upon
+    Væa hillside, "that the birds may live there undisturbed, and
+    raise above his grave the songs he loved so well."</p>
+
+    <p class="poem">"Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of
+    tales,
+    <br>
+     Giver of counsels and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight,
+    <br>
+     Looks o'er the labours of men in the plain and the hills; and
+    the sails
+    <br>
+     Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the
+    night."</p>
+
+    <p class="poem"><span style=
+    "text-align: right;">&mdash;A<font size="-1">NDREW</font>
+    L<font size="-1">ANG</font>.</span></p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <h2><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY"
+       id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2>
+
+    <h3>S<font size="-1">OME</font> W<font size="-1">ORKS IN</font>
+    R<font size="-1">ELATION TO</font> S<font size=
+    "-1">TEVENSON'S</font> L<font size="-1">IFE</font>,
+          W<font size="-1">RITTEN BY</font> H<font size="-1">IMSELF
+          AND</font> O<font size="-1">THERS</font></h3>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>GENERAL BIOGRAPHY</h3>
+
+    <p>Balfour, Graham: "Life of Robert Louis Stevenson." Two
+    vols.</p>
+
+    <p>Colvin, Sidney, ed.: "Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson,"
+    with biographical notes and an introduction by the editor.</p>
+
+    <p>Simpson, E. Blantyre: "The Robert Louis Stevenson
+    Originals."</p>
+
+    <p>Strong, Mrs. Isobel: "Robert Louis Stevenson."</p>
+
+    <p>Watts, Lauchlan Maclean: "Hills of Home"&mdash;with Pentland
+    Essays by R.L. Stevenson.</p>
+
+    <p>Watts: "Robert Louis Stevenson."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>ANCESTORS</h3>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "A Family of Engineers."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Thomas Stevenson"&mdash;in "Memories and
+    Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson: "Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh"&mdash;In "Essays
+    of Travel and in the Art of Writing."</p>
+
+    <p>Talbot, F.A.: "Lightships and Lighthouses." Chapters
+    relating to the building of Bell Rock and Skerryvore.</p>
+
+    <p>Poems by Stevenson: "To My Father." "Skerryvore."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS</h3>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "The Manse"&mdash;in "Memories and
+    Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured"&mdash;in
+    "Memories and Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Child's Play"&mdash;in "Virginibus
+    Puerisque."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "The Lantern Bearers"&mdash;in "Across the
+    Plains."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Child's Garden of Verses."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>THE STUDENT AND WANDERER</h3>
+
+    <p>Simpson, E. Blantyre: "Robert Louis Stevenson's Edinburgh
+    Days."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "An Apology for Idlers"&mdash;in
+    "Virginibus Puerisque."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Crabbed Age and Youth"&mdash;in "Virginibus
+    Puerisque."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Walking Tours"&mdash;in "Virginibus
+    Puerisque."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Some College Memories"&mdash;in "Memories
+    and Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Old Mortality"&mdash;in "Memories and
+    Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "A College Magazine"&mdash;in "Memories and
+    Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Pastoral"&mdash;in "Memories and
+    Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "An Old Scotch Gardener"&mdash;in "Memories
+    and Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Books Which Have Influenced Me"&mdash;in
+    "Later Essays."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Memories of an Islet"&mdash;in "Memories and
+    Portraits."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Random Memories"&mdash;in "Across the
+    Plains."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "An Inland Voyage."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes."</p>
+
+    <p>Low, Will H.: "A Chronicle of Friendships." Chapters dealing
+    with Stevenson's days in the artists' colonies of Fontainebleau
+    and Paris.</p>
+
+    <p>Poems by Stevenson: <span>"The Vagabond."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"The Song of the
+    Road."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"Bright is the Ring of
+    Words."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"Youth and Love," II.</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"The Canoe Speaks."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"A Camp."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"The Country of the
+    Carnisards."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"Our Lady of the
+    Snows."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"To a Gardener."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"To Will H. Low."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em">"To Andrew Lang."</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA</h3>
+
+    <p>Shipman, L.E.: "First Landing in New York"&mdash;In <i>Book
+    Buyer</i>, vol. 13, p. 13.</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "The Amateur Emigrant."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Across the Plains."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "The Old Pacific Capital (Monterey)"&mdash;in
+    "Across the Plains."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "The Silverado Squatters."</p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>SCOTLAND AGAIN</h3>
+
+    <p>Gosse, Edmund: "Personal Memories of Stevenson"&mdash;in
+    <i>Century</i>, vol. 28, p. 447.</p>
+
+    <p>Osbourne, Lloyd: "Stevenson at Play"&mdash;in <i>Scribner's
+    Magazine</i>, vol. 24, p. 709.</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to Biographical edition of
+    "Treasure Island."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "My First Book, 'Treasure Island'"&mdash;in
+    <i>McClure's Magazine</i>, vol. 3, p. 283.</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "Chapter on Dreams"&mdash;in "Across the
+    Plains."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to the Biographical edition of
+    "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."</p>
+
+    <p>Poems by Stevenson: "Skerryvore, the Parallel."
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"Bells upon the City are
+    Ringing in the Night."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"I Know Not How It Is With
+    You."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"Ticonderoga&mdash;a Legend
+    of the West Highlands."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"Heather Ale&mdash;a
+    Galloway Legend."</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA</h3>
+
+    <p>Low, Will H.: "Chronicle of Friendships." Chapters relating
+    to Stevenson's second visit to New York and his meeting with
+    General Sherman and the sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens.</p>
+
+    <p>Saint-Gaudens, Augustus: "Reminiscences of Saint-Gaudens."
+    Chapters dealing with Mr. Saint-Gaudens's recollections of
+    Stevenson at the time he made his portrait.</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters&mdash;From Saranac to the
+    Marquesas and Beyond."</p>
+
+    <p>Poems by Stevenson: "In the States."
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"Winter."</span></p>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <h3>IN THE SOUTH SEAS</h3>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters&mdash;From Saranac to the
+    Marquesas and Beyond."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "In the South Seas."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: "Cruise of the <i>Janet Nichol</i>
+    Among the South Sea Islands&mdash;a Diary."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "Beach of Falesá," "Isle of Voices,"
+    "Bottle Imp"&mdash;in "Island Nights' Entertainments."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "The Wrecker."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; "The Ebb Tide."</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;&mdash; Letters Dealing with Pacific Voyages and Life
+    in Samoa&mdash;in his collected letters edited by Sidney
+    Colvin.</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters from Samoa."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "A Foot-Note to History. Eight Years of
+    Trouble in Samoa."</p>
+
+    <p>Strong, Mrs. Isobel, and Osbourne, Lloyd: "Memories of
+    Vailima."</p>
+
+    <p>Stevenson, R.L.: "Prayers Written at Vailima."</p>
+
+    <p>Poems by Stevenson: "The Song of Rahéro&mdash;a Legend of
+    Tahiti."
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"The Feast of
+    Famine&mdash;Marquesan Manners."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"To an Island
+    Princess."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"To Kalakaua."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"To Princess
+    Kaiulani."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"The House of
+    Tembinoka."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"The Woodman."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"Tropic Rain."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"To My Wife."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 8.3em;">"To My Wife" (a
+    fragment).</span></p>
+
+    <p>Poems of Farewell: "The Morning Drum-Call on My Eager Ear."
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"In the Highlands, in the
+    Country Places."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"To My Old
+    Familiars."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"The Tropics Vanish."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"To S.C."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"To S.R. Crockett."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"Evensong."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"We Uncommiserate Pass into
+    the Night."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"I Have Trod the Upward and
+    Downward Slope."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"An End of Travel."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"The Celestial
+    Surgeon."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"Home No More Home to Me,
+    Whither Must I Wander?"</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"Farewell, Fair Day and
+    Fading Light."</span>
+    <br>
+     <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;">"Requiem."</span></p>
+
+    <p>Lang, Andrew: "Tusitala"&mdash;in "Later Collected
+    Verses."</p>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+    <p>Footnotes:</p>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+        <p><a name="Footnote__1"
+           id="Footnote__1"></a><a href=
+              "#FNanchor__1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>Stevenson,
+              "Family of Engineers."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+        <p><a name="Footnote__2"
+           id="Footnote__2"></a><a href=
+              "#FNanchor__2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>Talbot,
+              "Lightships and Lighthouses."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+        <p><a name="Footnote__3"
+           id="Footnote__3"></a><a href=
+              "#FNanchor__3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>Stevenson,
+              "Essay on Edinburgh."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+        <p><a name="Footnote__4"
+           id="Footnote__4"></a><a href=
+              "#FNanchor__4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>This
+              incident is told in the "Epilogue to An Inland
+              Voyage."</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="width: 65%;">
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for
+Boys and Girls, by Jacqueline M. Overton
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys
+and Girls, by Jacqueline M. Overton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls
+
+Author: Jacqueline M. Overton
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2005 [EBook #15547]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Govert Schipper and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             THE LIFE OF
+
+                        ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+                          FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                        JACQUELINE M. OVERTON
+
+
+
+
+                               NEW YORK
+
+                       CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+                                 1933
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Robert Louis Stevenson, from a photograph by Mr. Lloyd
+Osbourne]
+
+
+
+
+                 TO THE BOYS AT THE YORKVILLE LIBRARY
+                                 AND
+                          TO ALL OTHER BOYS
+            WHO LOVE TO TRAMP AND CAMP AND SEEK ADVENTURE
+                         I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+                     WITH THE HOPE OF MAKING THEM
+                  BETTER FRIENDS WITH A MAN WHO ALSO
+                          LOVED THESE THINGS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                 PAGE
+
+   I. THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS              3
+
+  II. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON              16
+
+ III. THE LANTERN BEARER                  31
+
+  IV. EDINBURGH DAYS                      47
+
+   V. AMATEUR EMIGRANT                    72
+
+  VI. SCOTLAND AGAIN                      93
+
+ VII. SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA            108
+
+VIII. IN THE SOUTH SEAS                  121
+
+  IX. VAILIMA                            148
+
+      BIBLIOGRAPHY                       175
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Robert Louis Stevenson                          _Frontispiece_
+  From a photograph by Mr. Lloyd Osbourne
+                                                        FACING
+                                                         PAGE
+
+No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson's birthplace       18
+
+Colinton Manse                                              26
+
+Swanston Cottage                                            42
+
+Edinburgh Castle                                            64
+
+Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth                             98
+
+The Treasure Island map                                    100
+
+Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with "An Inland Voyage"  106
+
+Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus Saint Gaudens          112
+
+South Sea houses                                           130
+
+The house at Vailima                                       154
+
+A feast of chiefs                                          162
+
+The tomb of Stevenson on Vaea Mountain                      172
+
+
+
+
+                             THE LIFE OF
+
+                        ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+                          FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+
+
+
+              "Write me as one who loves his fellowmen."
+                                                    --HUNT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS
+
+ "... For the sake
+  Of these, my kinsmen and my countrymen,
+  Who early and late in the windy ocean toiled
+  To plant a star for seamen."
+
+
+The pirate, Ralph the Rover, so legend tells, while cruising off the
+coast of Scotland searching for booty or sport, sank the warning bell on
+one of the great rocks, to plague the good Abbot of Arbroath who had put
+it there. The following year the Rover returned and perished himself on
+the same rock.
+
+In the life of one of Scotland's great men, Robert Louis Stevenson, we
+find proud record of his grandfather, Robert Stevenson, having built
+Bell Rock Lighthouse on this same spot years afterward.
+
+No story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life would be complete that failed
+to mention the work done for Scotland and the world at large by the two
+men he held most dear, the engineers, his father and grandfather.
+
+When Robert Stevenson, his grandfather, received his appointment on the
+Board of Northern Lights the art of lighthouse building in Scotland had
+just begun. Its bleak, rocky shores were world-famous for their danger,
+and few mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast
+"was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of the
+Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old,
+an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer. The whole archipelago thus
+nightly plunged in darkness was shunned by seagoing vessels." [Footnote:
+Stevenson, "Family of Engineers."]
+
+The board at first proposed building four new lights, but afterward
+built many more, so that to-day Scotland stands foremost among the
+nations for the number and splendor of her coast lights.
+
+Their construction in those early days meant working against tremendous
+obstacles and dangers, and the life of the engineer was a hazardous one.
+
+"The seas into which his labors carried him were still scarce charted,
+the coasts still dark; his way on shore was often far beyond the
+convenience of any road; the isles in which he must sojourn were still
+partly savage. He must toss much in boats; he must often adventure much
+on horseback by dubious bridle-track through unfrequented wildernesses;
+he must sometimes plant his lighthouses in the very camp of wreckers.
+
+"The aid of steam was not yet. At first in random coasting sloop, and
+afterwards in the cutter belonging to the service, the engineer must ply
+and run amongst these multiplied dangers and sometimes late into the
+stormy autumn."
+
+All of which failed to daunt Robert Stevenson who loved action and
+adventure and the scent of things romantic.
+
+"Not only had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted, the supply
+of oil must be maintained and the men fed, in the same inaccessible and
+distant scenes, a whole service with its routine ... had to be called
+out of nothing; and a new trade (that of light-keeper) to be taught,
+recruited and organized."
+
+Bell Rock was only one of twenty lighthouses Robert Stevenson helped to
+build, but it was by far the most difficult one ... and even to-day,
+after it has been lighted for more than a hundred years, it still
+remains unique--a monument to his skill.
+
+Bell Rock was practically a reef completely submerged at full tide and
+only a few feet of its crest visible at low water. To raise a tower on
+it meant placing a foundation under water, a new and perilous
+experiment.
+
+"Work upon the rock in the earliest stages was confined to the calmest
+days of the summer season, when the tides were lowest, the water
+smoothest, and the wind in its calmest mood. Under such conditions the
+men were able to stay on the site for about five hours....
+
+"One distinct drawback was the necessity to establish a depot some
+distance from the erecting site. Those were the days before steam
+navigation, and the capricious sailing craft offered the only means of
+maintaining communication between rock and shore, and for the conveyance
+of men and materials to and fro....
+
+"A temporary beacon was placed on the reef, while adjacent to the site
+selected for the tower a smith's forge was made fast, so as to withstand
+the dragging motion of the waves when the rock was submerged. The men
+were housed on the _Smeaton_, which, during the spells of work on the
+rock, rode at anchor a short distance away in deep water." [Footnote:
+Talbot, "Lightships and Lighthouses."]
+
+Once the engineers were all but lost when the _Smeaton_ slipped her
+moorings and left them stranded on the rock.
+
+In spite of all the obstacles, the work was completed at the end of two
+years and the light was shown for the first time February 1, 1811.
+
+"I found Robert Stevenson an appreciative and intelligent companion,"
+writes Sir Walter Scott in his journal, speaking of a cruise he made
+among the islands of Scotland with a party of engineers. The notes made
+by him on this trip were used afterward in his two stories, "The Pirate"
+and "Lord of the Isles."
+
+"My grandfather was king in the service to his finger-tips," wrote Louis
+Stevenson. "All should go his way, from the principal light-keeper's
+coat to the assistant's fender, from the gravel in the garden walks to
+the bad smell in the kitchen, or the oil spots on the storeroom floor.
+It might be thought there was nothing more calculated to awaken men's
+resentment, and yet his rule was not more thorough than it was
+beneficent. His thought for the keepers was continual.... When a keeper
+was sick, he lent him his horse and sent him mutton and brandy from the
+ship.... They dwelt, many of them, in uninhabited isles or desert
+forelands, totally cut off from shops.
+
+"No servant of the Northern Lights came to Edinburgh but he was
+entertained at Baxter Place. There at his own table my grandfather sat
+down delightedly with his broad-spoken, homespun officers."
+
+As he grew old his "medicine and delight" was his annual trip among his
+lighthouses, but at length there came a time when this joy was taken
+away from him and there came "the end of all his cruising; the knowledge
+that he had looked the last on Sunburgh, and the wild crags of Skye, and
+the Sound of Mull; that he was never again to hear the surf break in
+Clashcarnock; never again to see lighthouse after lighthouse (all
+younger than himself, and the more, part of his own device) open in the
+hour of dusk their flower of fire, or the topaz and ruby interchange on
+the summit of Bell Rock."
+
+Throughout the rank and file of his men he was adored. "I have spoken
+with many who knew him; I was his grandson, and their words may very
+well have been words of flattery; but there was one thing that could
+not be affected, and that was the look that came over their faces at the
+name of Robert Stevenson."
+
+Of his family of thirteen children, three of his sons became engineers.
+Thomas Stevenson, the father of Robert Louis, like the others of his
+family, contributed largely to lighthouse building and harbor
+improvement, serving under his older brother, Allen, in building the
+Skerryvore, one of the most famous deep-sea lights erected on a
+treacherous reef off the west coast where, for more than forty years,
+one wreck after another had occurred.
+
+"From the navigator's point of view, the danger of this spot lay chiefly
+in the fact that it was so widely scattered. The ridge runs like a
+broken backbone for a distance of some eight miles.... In rough weather
+the whole of the rocks are covered, and the waves, beating heavily on
+the mass, convert the scene into one of indescribable tumult....
+
+"There was only one point where a tower could be placed, and this was
+so exposed that the safe handling of men and material constituted a
+grave responsibility."
+
+It was necessary to erect a tower one hundred and thirty feet high; "the
+loftiest and weightiest work of its character that had ever been
+contemplated up to this time....
+
+"The Atlantic swell, which rendered landing on the ridge precarious and
+hazardous, did not permit the men to be housed upon a floating home, as
+had been the practice in the early days of the Bell Rock tower. In order
+to permit the work to go forward as uninterruptedly as the sea would
+allow, a peculiar barrack was erected. It was a house on stilts, the
+legs being sunk firmly into the rock, with the living quarters perched
+some fifty feet up in the air.
+
+"Residence in this tower was eerie. The men climbed the ladder and
+entered a small room, which served the purposes of kitchen, living-room,
+and parlor....
+
+"When a storm was raging, the waves, as they combed over the rock,
+shook the legs violently and scurried under the floor in seething foam.
+Now and again a roller, rising higher than its fellows, broke upon the
+rock and sent a mass of water against the flooring to hammer at the
+door. Above the living-room were the sleeping quarters, high and dry,
+save when a shower of spray fell upon the roof and walls like heavy
+hail.... The men, however, were not perturbed. Sleeping, even under such
+conditions, was far preferable to doubtful rest in a bunk upon an
+attendant vessel, rolling and pitching with the motion of the sea. They
+had had a surfeit of such experience ... while the barrack was under
+erection.
+
+"For two years it withstood the seas without incident, and the engineer
+and men came to regard the eyrie as safe as a house on shore. But one
+night the little colony received a shock. The angry Atlantic got one or
+two of its trip-hammer blows well home, and smashed the structure to
+fragments. Fortunately, at the time it was untenanted."
+
+No time was lost in rebuilding the barrack and this time it withstood
+all tests until it was torn down after Skerryvore was finished.
+
+"While the foundations were being prepared, and until the barrack was
+constructed, the men ran other terrible risks every morning and night
+landing upon and leaving the polished surface of the reef. Five months
+during the summer was the working season, but even then many days and
+weeks were often lost owing to the swell being too great to permit the
+rowing boat to come alongside. The engineer relates that the work was 'a
+good lesson in the school of patience,' because the delays were frequent
+and galling, while every storm which got up and expended its rage upon
+the reef left its mark indelibly among the engineer's stock in trade.
+Cranes and other materials were swept away as if they were corks;
+lashings, no matter how strong, were snapped like pack-threads.
+
+"Probably the worst experience was when the men on the rock were
+weather-bound for seven weeks during one season.... Their provisions
+sank to a very low level, they ran short of fuel, their sodden clothing
+was worn to rags....
+
+"Six years were occupied in the completion of the work, and, as may be
+imagined, the final touches were welcomed with thankfulness by those who
+had been concerned in the enterprise."
+
+It was in meteorological researches and illumination of lighthouses,
+however, that Thomas Stevenson did his greatest work. It was he who
+brought to perfection the revolving light now so generally used.
+
+In spite of this and other valuable inventions his name has remained
+little known, owing to the fact that none of his inventions were ever
+patented. The Stevensons believed that, holding government appointments,
+any original work they did belonged to the nation. "A patent not only
+brings in money but spreads reputation," writes his son, "and my
+father's instruments enter anonymously into a hundred light rooms and
+are passed anonymously over in a hundred reports, where the least
+considerable patent would stand out and tell its author's story."
+
+He was beloved among a wide circle of friends and the esteem of those in
+his profession was shown when in 1884 they chose him for president of
+the Royal Society of Edinburgh. To the general public, however, he
+remained unknown in spite of the fact that "His lights were in all parts
+of the world guiding the mariners."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
+
+ "As from the house your mother sees
+  You playing round the garden trees,
+  So you may see, if you will look
+  Through the window of this book,
+  Another child, far, far away,
+  And in another garden, play."
+
+            --"Child's Garden of Verses."
+
+
+Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was born at No. 8 Howard Place,
+Edinburgh, Scotland, November 13, 1850.
+
+In 1852 the family moved from Howard Place to Inverleith Terrace, and
+two years later to No. 17 Heriot Row, which remained their home for many
+years.
+
+As a child Louis was very delicate and often ill, for years hardly a
+winter passed that he did not spend many days in bed.
+
+Edinburgh in winter is extremely damp and he tells us: "Many winters I
+never crossed the threshold, but used to lie on my face on the nursery
+floor, chalking or painting in water-colors the pictures in the
+illustrated newspapers; or sit up in bed with a little shawl pinned
+about my shoulders, to play with bricks or what not."
+
+The diverting history of "Hop-O'-My-Thumb" and the "Seven-League Boots,"
+"Little Arthur's History of England," "Peter Parley's Historical Tales,"
+and "Harry's Ladder to Learning" were books which he delighted to pore
+over and their pages bore many traces of his skill with the pencil and
+paint-brush.
+
+Those who have read the "Child's Garden of Verses" already know the
+doings of his childish days, for although those rhymes were not written
+until he was a grown man he was "one of the few who do not forget their
+own lives" and "through the windows of this book" gives us a vivid and
+living picture of the boy who dwelt so much in a world of his own with
+his quaint thoughts.
+
+If his body was frail his spirit was strong and his power of
+imagination so great that he cheered himself through many a weary day by
+playing he was "captain of a tidy little ship," a soldier, a fierce
+pirate, an Indian chief, or an explorer in foreign lands. Miles he
+travelled in his little bed.
+
+ "I have just to shut my eyes,
+  To go sailing through the skies--
+  To go sailing far away
+  To the pleasant Land of Play"
+
+he says.
+
+[Illustration: No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Stevenson's birthplace]
+
+In spite of his power for amusing himself, days like these would have
+gone far harder had it not been for two devoted people, his mother and
+his nurse, Alison Cunningham or "Cummie" as he called her. His mother
+was devoted to him in every way and encouraged his love for reading and
+story-making. She kept a diary of his progress from day to day, and
+treasured every picture he drew or scrap he wrote. Cummie came to him as
+a Torryburn lassie when he was eighteen months old and was like a second
+mother to him. She not only cared for his bodily comforts but was his
+friend and comrade as well. She sang for him, danced for him, spun fine
+tales of pirates and smugglers, and read to him so dramatically that his
+mind was fired then and there with a longing for travel and adventure
+which he never lost. When they took their walks through the streets
+together Cummie had many stories to tell him of Scotland and Edinburgh
+in the old days. For Edinburgh is a wonderful old city with a wonderful
+history full of tales of stirring adventure and romance. "For centuries
+it was a capitol thatched with heather and more than once, in the evil
+days of English invasion, it has gone up in flames to Heaven, a beacon
+to ships at sea.... It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not
+only on Greenside or by the King's Stables, where set tournaments were
+fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the royal
+presence, but in every alley where there was room to cross swords.... In
+the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows'
+nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat
+James VI. would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the
+goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the
+castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal
+fanatics, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors,
+sat day and night 'with tearful psalms.'... In the Grassmarket,
+stiff-necked covenanting heroes offered up the often unnecessary, but
+not less honorable, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent farewell
+to sun, moon and stars and earthly friendships, or died silent to the
+roll of the drums. Down by yon outlet rode Grahame of Claverhouse and
+his thirty dragoons, with the town beating to arms behind their horses'
+tails--a sorry handful thus riding for their lives, but with a man at
+their head who was to return in a different temper, make a bold dash
+that staggered Scotland, and die happily in the thick of the fight....
+
+"The palace of Holyrood is a house of many memories.... Great people of
+yore, kings and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors played their
+stately farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing
+has lasted deep into the night, murder has been done in its chambers.
+There Prince Charlie held his phantom levees and in a very gallant
+manner represented a fallen dynasty for some hours....
+
+"There is an old story of the subterranean passage between the castle
+and Holyrood and a bold Highland piper who volunteered to explore its
+windings. He made his entrance by the upper end, playing a strathspey;
+the curious footed it after him down the street, following his descent
+by the sound of the chanter from below; until all of a sudden, about the
+level of St. Giles the music came abruptly to an end, and the people in
+the street stood at fault with hands uplifted. Whether he choked with
+gases, or perished in a quag, or was removed bodily by the Evil One,
+remains a point of doubt, but the piper has never again been seen or
+heard of from that day to this. Perhaps he wandered down into the land
+of Thomas the Rhymer, and some day, when it is least expected, may take
+a thought to revisit the sunlit upper world. That will be a strange
+moment for the cabmen on the stands beside St. Giles, when they hear the
+crone of his pipes reascending from the earth below their horses' feet."
+
+In Edinburgh to-day there are armed men and cannon in the castle high up
+on the great rock above you: "You may see the troops marshalled on the
+high parade, and at night after the early winter evenfall and in the
+morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over
+Edinburgh the sounds of drums and bugles." (Stevenson, "Essay on
+Edinburgh.")
+
+Long before Louis could write he made up verses and stories for himself,
+and Cummie wrote them down for him. "I thought they were rare nonsense
+then," she said, little dreaming that these same bits of "rare
+nonsense" were the beginnings of what was to make "her boy" famous
+across two seas in years to come.
+
+He writes of her when speaking of long nights he lay awake unable to
+sleep because of a troublesome cough: "How well I remember her lifting
+me out of bed, carrying me to the window and showing me one or two lit
+windows up in Queen Street across the dark belt of garden, where also,
+we told each other, there might be sick little boys and their nurses
+waiting, like us, for the morning."
+
+Her devotion to him had its reward in the love he gave her all his life.
+One of his early essays written when he was twenty and published in the
+_Juvenilia_ was called "Nurses." Fifteen years later came the
+publication of the "Child's Garden of Verses" with a splendid tribute to
+her as a dedication. He sent her copies of all his books, wrote letters
+to her, and invited her to visit him. She herself tells that the last
+time she ever saw him he said to her, "before a room full of people,
+'It's _you_ that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie,' 'Me, Master
+Lou,' I said, 'I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.' 'Ay,
+woman,' said he, 'but it was the good dramatic way ye had of reciting
+the hymns.'"
+
+When he was six years old his Uncle David offered a Bible picture-book
+as a prize to the nephews who could write the best history of Moses.
+
+This was Louis's first real literary attempt. He was not able to write
+himself, but dictated to his mother and illustrated the story and its
+cover with pictures which he designed and painted himself.
+
+He won the prize and from that time, his mother says, "it was the desire
+of his heart to be an author."
+
+During the winter of 1856-57 his favorite cousin, Robert Alan Mowbray
+Stevenson, usually called Bob, visited them; a great treat for Louis,
+not only because his ill health kept him from making many companions of
+his own age, but because Bob loved many of the same things he did and to
+"make believe" was as much a part of his life as Louis's. Many fine
+games they had together; built toy theatres, the scenery and characters
+for which they bought for a "penny plain and twopence colored," and were
+never tired of dressing up. One of their chief delights, he says, was in
+"rival kingdoms of our own invention--Nosingtonia and Encyclopaedia, of
+which we were perpetually drawing maps." Even the eating of porridge at
+breakfast became a game. Bob ate his with sugar and said it was an
+island covered with snow with here a mountain and there a valley; while
+Louis's was an island flooded by milk which gradually disappeared bit by
+bit.
+
+In the spring and summer his mother took him for short trips to the
+watering-places near Edinburgh. But the spot unlike all others for a
+real visit was at Colinton Manse, the home of his grandfather, the
+Reverend Lewis Balfour, at Colinton, on the Water of Leith, five miles
+southwest of Edinburgh. Here he spent glorious days. Not only was there
+the house and garden, both rare spots for one of an exploring turn of
+mind, but, best of all, there were the numerous cousins of his own age
+sent out from India, where their parents were, to be nursed and educated
+under the loving eye of Aunt Jane Balfour, for whom he wrote:
+
+ "Chief of our aunts--not only I,
+  But all the dozen nurslings cry--
+  What did the other children do?
+  And what was childhood, wanting you?"
+
+[Illustration: Colinton Manse]
+
+If Louis lacked brothers and sisters he had no dearth of cousins, fifty
+in all they numbered, many of them near his own age. Alan Stevenson,
+Henrietta and Willie Traquair seem to have been his favorite chums at
+Colinton.
+
+Of his grandfather Balfour he says: "We children admired him, partly for
+his beautiful face and silver hair ... partly for the solemn light in
+which we beheld him once a week, the observed of all observers in the
+pulpit. But his strictness and distance, the effect, I now fancy, of old
+age, slow blood, and settled habits, oppressed us with a kind of terror.
+When not abroad, he sat much alone writing sermons or letters to his
+scattered family.... The study had a redeeming grace in many Indian
+pictures gaudily colored and dear to young eyes.... When I was once sent
+in to say a psalm to my grandfather, I went, quaking indeed with fear,
+but at the same time glowing with hope that, if I said it well, he might
+reward me with an Indian picture."
+
+"There were two ways of entering the Manse garden," he says, "one the
+two-winged gate that admitted the old phaeton and the other a door for
+pedestrians on the side next the kirk.... On the left hand were the
+stables, coach-houses and washing houses, clustered around a small,
+paved court.... Once past the stable you were fairly within the garden.
+On summer afternoons the sloping lawn was literally _steeped_ in
+sunshine....
+
+"The wall of the church faces the manse, but the church yard is on a
+level with the top of the wall ... and the tombstones are visible from
+the enclosure of the manse.... Under the retaining wall was a somewhat
+dark pathway, extending from the stable to the far end of the garden,
+and called the 'witches' walk' from a game we used to play in it....
+Even out of the 'witches' walk' you saw the Manse facing toward you,
+with its back to the river and the wooded bank, and the bright
+flower-plots and stretches of comfortable vegetables in front and on
+each side of it; flower plots and vegetable borders, by the way, on
+which it was almost death to set foot, and about which we held a curious
+belief,--namely, that my grandfather went round and measured any
+footprints that he saw, to compare the measurement at night with the
+boots put out for brushing; to avoid which we were accustomed, by a
+strategic movement of the foot to make the mark longer....
+
+"So much for the garden; now follow me into the house. On entering the
+door you had before you a stone paved lobby.... There stood a case of
+foreign birds, two or three marble deities from India and a lily of the
+Nile in a pot, and at the far end the stairs shut in the view. With how
+many games of 'tig' or brick-building in the forenoon is the long low
+dining room connected in my mind! The storeroom was a most voluptuous
+place, with its piles of biscuit boxes and spice tins, the rack for
+buttered eggs, the little window that let in the sunshine and the
+flickering shadows of leaves, and the strong sweet odor of everything
+that pleaseth the taste of men....
+
+"Opposite the study was the parlor, a small room crammed full of
+furniture and covered with portraits, with a cabinet at the side full of
+foreign curiosities, and a sort of anatomical trophy on the top. During
+a grand cleaning of the apartment I remember all the furniture was
+ranged on a circular grass plot between the churchyard and the house. It
+was a lovely still summer evening, and I stayed out, climbing among the
+chairs and sofas. Falling on a large bone or skull, I asked what it was.
+Part of an albatross, auntie told me. 'What is an albatross?' I asked,
+and then she described to me this great bird nearly as big as a house,
+that you saw out miles away from any land, sleeping above the vast and
+desolate ocean. She told me that the _Ancient Mariner_ was all about
+one; and quoted with great _verve_ (she had a duster in her hand, I
+recollect)--
+
+ 'With my crossbow
+  I shot the albatross.'
+
+... Willie had a crossbow, but up to this date I had never envied him
+its possession. After this, however, it became one of the objects of my
+life."
+
+With many playmates, free to roam and romp as he chose, his illness
+forgotten, it is no wonder he says he felt as if he led two lives, one
+belonging to Edinburgh and one to the country, and that Colinton ever
+remained an enchanted spot to which it was always hard to say good-by.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LANTERN BEARER
+
+ "Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
+  In school, some graduate of the field or street,
+  Who shall become a master of the art,
+  An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
+  Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
+  For lands not yet laid down on any chart."
+
+                                     --LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+School days began for Louis in 1859, but were continually interrupted by
+illness, travel, and change of school. His father did not believe in
+forcing him to study; so he roamed through school according to his own
+sweet will, attending classes where he cared to, interesting himself in
+the subjects that appealed to him--Latin, French, and
+mathematics--neglecting the others and bringing home no prizes, to
+Cummie's distress.
+
+Certain books were his prime favorites at this time. "Robinson Crusoe,"
+he says, "and some of the books of Mayne Reid and a book called Paul
+Blake--Swiss Family Robinson also. At these I played, conjured up their
+scenes and delighted to hear them rehearsed to seventy times seven.
+
+"My father's library was a spot of some austerity; the proceedings of
+learned societies, cyclopaedias, physical science and above all, optics
+held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and
+corners that anything legible existed as if by accident. Parents'
+Assistant, Rob Roy, Waverley and Guy Mannering, Pilgrim's Progress,
+Voyages of Capt. Woods Rogers, Ainsworth's Tower of London and four old
+volumes of Punch--these were among the chief exceptions.
+
+"In these latter which made for years the chief of my diet, I very early
+fell in love (almost as soon as I could spell) with the Snob Papers. I
+knew them almost by heart ... and I remember my surprise when I found
+long afterward that they were famous, and signed with a famous name; to
+me, as I read and admired them, they were the works of Mr. Punch."
+
+Two old Bibles interested him particularly. They had belonged to his
+grandfather Stevenson and contained many marked passages and notes
+telling how they had been read aboard lighthouse tenders and on tours of
+inspection among the islands.
+
+After he was thirteen his health was greatly improved and he was able to
+enjoy the comradeship of other lads, though he never cared greatly for
+sports. He was the leader of a number of boys who used to go about
+playing tricks on the neighbors--"tapping on their windows after
+nightfall, and all manner of wild freaks."
+
+"Crusoing" was a favorite game and its name stood for all picnicking in
+the open air, building bonfires and cooking apples, but the crowning
+sport of all was "Lantern Bearing," a game invented by himself and
+shared by a dozen of his cronies.
+
+"Toward the end of September," he says, "when school time was drawing
+near and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from
+our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern....
+We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them,
+such was the rigor of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled
+noxiously of blistered tin; they never burned aright, though they would
+always burn our fingers; their use was naught; the pleasure of them
+merely fanciful; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat
+asked for nothing more.
+
+"When two of these asses met there would be an anxious, 'Have you your
+lantern?' and a gratified 'Yes,' That was the shibboleth, and a very
+needful one too; for as it was the rule to keep our glory contained,
+none could recognize a lantern-bearer, unless like a polecat, by the
+smell.
+
+"The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night,
+the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a ray escaping whether to
+conduct your footsteps or make your glory public, a mere pillar of
+darkness in the dark, and all the while, deep down in the privacy of
+your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt and exult
+and sing over the knowledge."
+
+In later years one of the Lantern Bearers describes Louis as he was
+then. "A slender, long legged boy in pepper and salt tweeds, with an
+undescribable influence that forced us to include him in our play as a
+looker on, critic and slave driver.... No one had the remotest intention
+of competing with R.L.S. in story making, and his tales, had we known
+it, were such as the world would listen to in silence and wonder."
+
+At home and at his last school he was always starting magazines. The
+stories were illustrated with much color and the magazines circulated
+among the boys for a penny a reading. One was called _The Sunbeam
+Magazine_, an illustrated miscellany of fact, fiction, and fun, and
+another _The School Boy Magazine_. The latter contained four stories and
+its readers must have been hard to satisfy if they did not have their
+fill of horrors--"regular crawlers," Louis called them. In the first
+tale, "The Adventures of Jan Van Steen," the hero is left hidden in a
+boiler under which a fire is lit. The second is a "Ghost Story" of
+robbers in a deserted castle.... The third is called, "by curious
+anticipation of a story he was to write later on, 'The Wreckers.'"
+
+Numerous plays and novels he began but they eventually found their fate
+in the trash basket. An exception to this was a small green pamphlet of
+twenty pages called "The Pentland Rising, a page of history, 1666." It
+was published through his father's interest on the two-hundredth
+anniversary of the fight at Rullion Green. This event in Scotland's
+history had been impressed on his mind by the numerous stories. Cummie
+had told him of the Covenanters and the fact that they had spent the
+night before their defeat in the town of Colinton.
+
+From the time he was a little chap, balancing on the limb of an
+apple-tree in the Colinton garden trying to see what kind of a world
+lay beyond the garden wall, Louis had had a longing to travel and see
+sights. This began to find satisfaction now.
+
+His father took him on a trip around the coast of Fife, visiting the
+harbor lights. The little towns along the coast were already familiar to
+him by the stories of the past. Dunfermline, where, according to the
+ballad, Scotland's king once "sat in his tower drinking blood-red wine";
+Kerkcaldy, where the witches used to sink "tall ships and honest
+mariners in the North Sea"; and "Wemyss with its bat-haunted caves,
+where the Chevalier Johnstone on his flight from Colloden passed a night
+of superstitious terrors."
+
+Later the family made a trip to the English Lakes and in the winter of
+the same year to the south of France, where they stayed two months, then
+making a tour through Italy and Switzerland. The following Christmas
+found Louis and his mother again in Mentone, where they stayed until
+spring.
+
+French was one of his favorite studies at school, and now after a few
+months among French people he was able to speak fluently. Indeed, in
+after life he was often mistaken for a Frenchman.
+
+His French teacher on his second visit to Mentone gave him no regular
+lessons, but "merely talked to him in French, teaching him piquet and
+card tricks, introducing him to various French people and taking him to
+concerts and other places; so, his mother remarks, like Louis' other
+teachers at home I think they found it pleasanter to talk to him then to
+teach him."
+
+After their return to Edinburgh came the time when, his school days
+finished, Louis must make up his mind what his career is to be and train
+himself for it.
+
+Even then he knew what he wanted to do was to write. He had fitted up a
+room on the top floor at Heriot Row as a study and spent hours there
+covering paper with stories or trying to describe in the very best way
+scenes which had impressed him. Most of these were discarded when
+finished. "I liked doing them indeed," he said, "but when done I could
+see they were rubbish." He never doubted, however, that some day his
+attempts would prove worth while, if he could only devote his time to
+learning to write and write well.
+
+His father, he knew, had different plans for him, however. Of course,
+Louis would follow in his footsteps and be the sixth Stevenson to hold a
+place on the Board of Northern Lights. So, although he had little heart
+in the work, he entered the University of Edinburgh and spent the next
+three and a half years studying for a science degree.
+
+The summer of 1868 he was sent with an engineering party to Anstruther,
+on the coast, where a breakwater was being built. There he had his first
+opportunity of seeing some of the practical side of engineering. It was
+rough work, but he enjoyed it. Later he spent three weeks on Earraid
+Island, off Mull, a place which left a strong impression on his mind and
+figured afterward as the spot where David Balfour was shipwrecked.
+
+Among the experiences at that time which pleased him most was a chance
+to descend in a diver's dress to the foundation of the harbor they were
+building. In his essays, "Random Memories," he tells of the "dizzy
+muddleheaded joy" he had in his surroundings, swaying like a reed, and
+grabbing at the fish which darted past him.
+
+In writing afterward of these years he says: "What I gleaned I am sure I
+do not know, but indeed I had already my own private determination to be
+an author ... though I haunted the breakwater by day, and even loved the
+place for the sake of the sunshine, the thrilling sea-side air, the wash
+of the waves on the sea face, the green glimmer of the diver's helmets
+far below.... My own genuine occupation lay elsewhere and my only
+industry was in the hours when I was not on duty. I lodged with a
+certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter by trade, and there as soon as dinner
+was despatched ... drew my chair to the table and proceeded to pour
+forth literature.
+
+"I wish to speak with sympathy of my education as an engineer. It takes
+a man into the open air; keeps him hanging about harbor sides, the
+richest form of idling; it carries him to wild islands; it gives him a
+taste of the genial danger of the sea ... and when it has done so it
+carries him back and shuts him in an office. From the roaring skerry and
+the wet thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the stool and desk, and
+with a memory full of ships and seas and perilous headlands and shining
+pharos, he must apply his long-sighted eyes to the pretty niceties of
+drawing or measure his inaccurate mind with several pages of consecutive
+figures."
+
+"The roaring skerry and the tossing boat," appealed to him as they had
+to his grandfather before him, but they did not balance his dislike for
+the "office and the stool" or make him willing to devote his time and
+energy to working for them, so his university record was very poor. "No
+one ever played the truant with more deliberate care," he says, "and no
+one ever had more certificates (of attendance) for less education."
+
+One thing that he gained from his days at the university was the
+friendship of Professor Fleeming Jenkin. He was fifteen years older than
+Louis, but they had many common interests and the professor had much
+good influence over him. He was one of the first to see promise in his
+writing and encouraged him to go on with it.
+
+Both the professor and Mrs. Jenkin were much interested in dramatics and
+each year brought a group of friends together at their house for private
+theatricals. Stevenson was a constant visitor at their home, joining
+heartily in these plays and looking forward to them, although he never
+took any very important part.
+
+After Professor Jenkin's death Stevenson wrote his biography, and says
+it was a "mingled pain and pleasure to dig into the past of a dead
+friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter."
+
+About this time Thomas Stevenson bought Swanston Cottage in the Pentland
+Hills, about five miles from Edinburgh, and for the next fourteen years
+the family spent their summers there, and Louis often went out in
+winter as well. It ever remained one of his favorite spots and with
+Colinton stood out as a place that meant much in his life.
+
+[Illustration: Swanston Cottage]
+
+These years saw great change in him; from a frank and happy child he had
+grown into a lonely, moody boy making few friends and shunning the
+social life that his father's position in Edinburgh offered him. He
+describes himself as a "lean, ugly, unpopular student," but those who
+knew him never applied the term "ugly" to him at any time.
+
+At Swanston he explored the hills alone and grew to know them so well
+that the Pentland country ever remained vividly in his memory and found
+its way into many of his stories, notably "St. Ives," where he describes
+Swanston as it was when they first made it their summer home.
+
+Many solitary winter evenings he spent there rereading his favorite
+novels, particularly Dumas's "Vicomte de Bragelonne," which always
+pleased him. "Shakespeare has served me best," he said. "Few living
+friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as Hamlet or
+Rosalind. Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside of Shakespeare is
+D'Artagnan, the elderly D'Artagnan of the 'Vicomte de Bragelonne.'
+
+"I would return in the early night from one of my patrols with the
+shepherd, a friendly face would meet me in the door, a friendly
+retriever scurry up stairs to fetch my slippers, and I would sit down
+with the Vicomte for a long, silent, solitary lamp-lit evening by the
+fire."
+
+At Swanston he first began to really write, "bad poetry," he says, and
+during his solitary rambles fought with certain problems that perplexed
+him.
+
+Here he made the acquaintance of the Scotch gardener, Robert Young, and
+John Todd, the "Roaring Shepherd, the oldest herd on the Pentlands,"
+whom he accompanied on his rounds with the sheep, listening to his tales
+told in broad Scotch of the highland shepherds in the old days when "he
+himself often marched flocks into England, sleeping on the hillsides
+with his caravan; and by his account it was rough business not without
+danger. The drove roads lay apart from habitation; the drivers met in
+the wilderness, as to-day the deep sea fishers meet off the banks in the
+solitude of the Atlantic."
+
+All this time Louis was idling through the university, knowing that in
+the end he would make nothing of himself as an engineer and dreading to
+confess it to his father. At length, however, his failure in his studies
+came to Thomas Stevenson's attention, and, on being questioned about it
+"one dreadful day" as they were walking together, the boy frankly
+admitted that his heart was not with the work and he cared for nothing
+but to be able to write.
+
+While at school his father had encouraged him to follow his own bent in
+his studies and reading, but when it came to the point of choosing his
+life-work, there ought to be no question of doubt. The only natural
+thing for Louis to do was to carry on the great and splendid work that
+he himself had helped to build up. That the boy should have other plans
+of his own surprised and troubled him. Literature, he said, was no
+profession, and thus far Louis had not done enough to prove he had a
+claim for making it his career.
+
+After much debate it was finally decided that he should give up
+engineering, but should enter the law school and study to be admitted to
+the bar. This would not only give him an established profession, but
+leave him a little time to write as well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+EDINBURGH DAYS
+
+ "I am fevered with the sunset,
+  I am fretful with the bay,
+  For the wander-thirst is on me
+  And my soul is in Cathay.
+
+ "There's a schooner in the offing,
+  With her topsails shot with fire,
+  And my heart has gone aboard her
+  For the island of Desire."
+
+                     --RICHARD HOVEY.
+
+
+In spite of the fact that his law studies now left him an opportunity
+for the work he wanted so much to do, Louis was far from happy, for
+between his parents and himself, who had always been the best of
+friends, there were many misunderstandings.
+
+Thomas Stevenson was bitterly disappointed that his only son should
+choose to be what he called "an idler"--generous to a fault and always
+out of money, dressing in a careless and eccentric way, which both
+amused and annoyed his friends and caused him to be ridiculed by
+strangers, preferring to roam the streets of old Edinburgh scraping
+acquaintance with the fishwives and dock hands, rather than staying at
+home and mingling in the social circle to which his parents belonged.
+But his father was still more troubled by certain independent religious
+opinions, far different from those in which he had been reared, that
+Louis adopted at this time.
+
+How any good result could come from all this neither his father nor
+mother could see, and with the loss of their sympathy he was thrown upon
+himself and was lonely and rebellious.
+
+He longed to get away from it all, to quit Edinburgh with its harsh
+climate, and often on his walks he leaned over the great bridge that
+joins the New Town with the Old "and watched the trains smoking out from
+under, and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies." He
+longed to go with them "to that Somewhere-else of the imagination where
+all troubles are supposed to end."
+
+It was a comfort to him at this time to remember other Scotchmen,
+Jeffries, Burns, Fergusson, Scott, Carlyle, and others, who had roamed
+these same streets before him, not a few of them fighting with the same
+problems he faced in their struggle to win their ideal.
+
+This unhappy time, this "Greensickness," as he called it, came to an
+end, however, through the help of what Louis had always secretly longed
+for--friends. Several whom he met at this time influenced him, but first
+of them all he put his cousin Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (Bob), who
+returned to Edinburgh about this time from Paris, where he had been
+studying art.
+
+Louis says: "The mere return of Bob changed at once and forever the
+course of my life; I can give you an idea of my relief only by saying
+that I was at last able to breathe.... I was done with the sullens for
+good.... I had got a friend to laugh with."
+
+Here at last was a companion who understood him and sympathized with
+what he was trying to do. Since as children they had made believe
+together in their rival kingdoms of "Nosingtonia" and "Encyclopaedia"
+they had had many traits and tastes in common. They now began where they
+had left off and proceeded to enjoy themselves once more by all sorts of
+wild pranks and gay expeditions.
+
+The Speculative Society became another great source of pleasure. It was
+an old society and had numbered among its members such men of note as
+Scott, Jeffrey, Robert Emmet, and others. Once a week from November to
+March the "Spec," as it was called, met in rooms in the University of
+Edinburgh. An essay was read and debates followed with much hot
+discussion, which delighted Stevenson. "Oh, I do think the Spec is about
+the best thing in Edinburgh," he said enthusiastically.
+
+Sir Walter Simpson, son of the famous doctor, Sir James Simpson, who
+discovered chloroform, became another chum about this time, and for the
+next ten years they were much together. He likewise was studying law and
+was a near neighbor. The Simpsons kept open house, and it was the custom
+for a group of cronies to drop in at all hours of day and night. Louis
+was among those who came oftenest, and Sir Walter's sister writes: "He
+would frequently drop in to dinner with us, and of an evening he had the
+run of the smoking room. After ten p.m. the 'open sesame' to our door
+was a rattle on the letter box and Louis' fancy for the mysterious was
+whetted by this admittance by secret sign, and we liked his special
+rat-a-tat for it was the forerunner of an hour or two of talk."
+
+They teased him about his queer clothes and laughed at some of his wild
+ideas, but he seldom was angry at them for it and never stayed away very
+long.
+
+With them he often skated on Duddington Loch or canoed on the Firth of
+Forth. One summer he and Sir Walter yachted off the west coast of
+Scotland, and still another year, when longing for further wandering
+possessed them, they made a trip in canoes through the inland waters of
+Belgium from Antwerp to Brussels, and then into France and by the rivers
+Sambre and Oise nearly to Paris.
+
+In the "Inland Voyage," where Stevenson describes this trip, he calls
+Sir Walter and his canoe "Cigarette" while he was "Arethusa." Adventures
+were plentiful, and they aroused much curiosity among the dwellers on
+the banks, with whom they made friends as they went along.
+
+Once Arethusa was all but drowned, when his canoe was overturned by the
+rapids; and on several occasions, when they applied for a night's
+lodging, they were suspected of being tramps or peddlers because of
+their bedraggled appearance.
+
+One evening after a hard day's paddling in the rain they landed tired,
+wet, and hungry at the little town of La Fere. "The Cigarette and I
+could not sufficiently congratulate each other on the prospect," says
+the Arethusa, "for we had been told there was a capital inn at La Fere.
+Such a dinner as we were going to eat. Such beds as we were going to
+sleep in, and all the while the rain raining on homeless folk over all
+the poplared country-side. It made our mouths water. The inn bore the
+name of some woodland animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which.
+But I shall never forget how spacious and how eminently comfortable it
+looked as we drew near.... A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we
+sighted a great field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and
+smelt like a garden of things to eat.
+
+"Into this ... you are now to suppose us making our triumphal entry, a
+pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag upon
+his arm. I do not believe I have a sound view of that kitchen; I saw it
+through a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps
+of cook-men, who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us
+with surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady however; there she
+was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. Her I
+asked politely--too politely, thinks the Cigarette--if we could have
+beds, she surveying us coldly from head to foot.
+
+"'You will find beds in the suburb,' she remarked. 'We are too busy for
+the like of you.'
+
+"If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order a bottle of
+wine I felt sure we could put things right, so I said, 'If we can not
+sleep, we may at least dine,' and was for depositing my bag.
+
+"What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed in the
+landlady's face! She made a run at us and stamped her foot.
+
+"'Out with you--out of the door!' she screeched.
+
+"I do not know how it happened, but the next moment we were out in the
+rain and darkness. This was not the first time that I have been refused
+a lodging. Often and often I have planned what I would do if such a
+misadventure happened to me again, and nothing is easier to plan. But to
+put in execution, with a heart boiling at the indignity? Try it, try it
+only once, and tell me what you did."
+
+Frequently on this trip the Arethusa's odd dress and foreign looks led
+him to be taken for a spy. It was not long after the Franco-Prussian
+war, and all sorts of rumors of suspicious characters were afloat. Once
+he was actually arrested and thrown into a dungeon because he could show
+no passport, and the commissary refused to believe he was English and
+puzzled his head over the scraps of notes and verses found in his
+knapsack.
+
+He was rescued by the faithful Cigarette, who finally convinced the
+officials that they were British gentlemen travelling in this odd way
+for pleasure, and the things in his friend's bag were not plans against
+the government, but merely scraps of poetry and notes on their travels
+that he liked to amuse himself by making as they went along. [Footnote:
+This incident is told in the "Epilogue to An Inland Voyage."]
+
+The canoe trips ended in a visit to the artists' colony at
+Fontainebleau, where Bob Stevenson and a brother of Sir Walter's were
+spending their summer. This place always had a particular attraction for
+Louis and he spent many weeks both there and at Grez near by during the
+next few years.
+
+The free and easy life led by the artists suited him exactly, although
+he found it hard to accomplish any work of his own, but dreamed and
+planned all sorts of essays, verses, and tales which he never wrote,
+while the others put their pictures on canvas.
+
+"I kept always two books in my pocket," he says, "one to read and one to
+write in. As I walked my mind was busy fitting what I saw with
+appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside I would either read, or a
+pencil and penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down the
+features of the scene or commemorate some halting stanzas. Thus I lived
+with words."
+
+If there was little work, to show after a stop at Fontainebleau he had
+many memories of good-fellowship and some of the friends he met there
+were to be the first to greet him when he came to live on this side of
+the water.
+
+While on their "Inland Voyage" the two canoemen had decided that the
+most perfect mode of travel was by canal-boat. What could be more
+delightful? "The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of
+the canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the barge
+floats by great forests and through great cities with their public
+buildings and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in his floating
+home, 'travelling abed,' it is merely as if he were listening to another
+man's story or turning the leaves of a picture book in which he had no
+concern. He may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the
+banks of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside."
+
+They grew most enthusiastic over the idea and told one another how they
+would furnish their "water villa" with easy chairs, pipes, and tobacco,
+and the bird and the dog should go along too.
+
+By the time Fontainebleau was reached they had planned trips through all
+the canals of Europe. The idea took the artists' fancy also, and a group
+of them actually purchased a canal-boat called _The Eleven Thousand
+Virgins of Cologne_. Furnishing a water villa, however, was more
+expensive than they had foreseen, and she came to a sad end. "'The
+Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne' rotted in the stream where she was
+beautified ... she was never harnessed to the patient track-horse. And
+when at length she was sold, by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there
+was sold along with her the _Arethusa_ and the _Cigarette_ ... now these
+historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and alien names."
+
+In 1873 Stevenson planned to try for admission to the English bar
+instead of the Scottish and went to London to take the examination. But
+his health, which had been rather poor, became worse, and on reaching
+London the doctor ordered him to Mentone in the south of France, where
+he had been before as a boy.
+
+There he spent his days principally lying on his back in the sun reading
+and playing with a little Russian girl with whom he struck up a great
+friendship. His letters to his mother were full of her sayings and
+doings. He was too ill to write much, although one essay, "Ordered
+South," was the outcome of this trip, the only piece of writing in which
+he ever posed as an invalid or talked of his ill health.
+
+At the end of two months he improved enough to return to Edinburgh, but
+gave up the idea of the English bar. His illness and absence seemed to
+have smoothed out some of the difficulties at home, and after he
+returned things went happier in every way.
+
+On July 14, 1875, he passed his final law examinations, and was admitted
+to the Scottish bar. He was now entitled to wear a wig and gown, place
+a brass plate with his name upon the door of 17 Heriot Row, and "have
+the fourth or fifth share of the services of a clerk" whom it is said he
+didn't even know by sight. For a few months he made some sort of a
+pretense at practising, but it amounted to very little. Gradually he
+ceased paying daily visits to the Parliament House to wait for a case,
+but settled himself instead in the room on the top floor at home and
+began to write, seriously this time--it was to be his life-work from now
+on--and the law was forgotten.
+
+His first essays were published in the _Cornhill Magazine_ and _The
+Portfolio_ under the initials R.L.S., which signature in time grew so
+familiar to his friends and to those who admired his writings it became
+a second name for him, and as R.L.S. he is often referred to.
+
+He was free now to roam as he chose and spent much time in Paris with
+Bob. The life there in the artists' quarter suited him as well as it
+had at Fontainebleau. There, among other American artists, he was
+associated with Mr. Will Low, a painter, whom he saw much of when he
+came to New York.
+
+One September he took a walking trip in the Cevenne Mountains with no
+other companion than a little gray donkey, Modestine, who carried his
+pack and tried his patience by turns with her pace, which was "as much
+slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run," as he tells in the
+chronicle of the trip.
+
+A visit at Grez in 1876 was to mark a point in his life. Heretofore the
+artists' colony had been composed only of men. This year there were
+three new arrivals, Americans, a Mrs. Osbourne and her young son and
+daughter. Their home in California had been broken up and the mother had
+come to Grez to paint for the summer.
+
+Those who had been there for a number of years, R.L.S. among them,
+looked on the newcomers as intruders and did not hesitate to say so
+among themselves. Before the summer was over, however, they were
+obliged to confess that the newcomers had added to the charms of Grez,
+and Louis found in Mrs. Osbourne another companion to add to his rapidly
+growing list.
+
+When the artists scattered in the autumn and he returned to Edinburgh
+and Mrs. Osbourne to California, he carried with him the hope that some
+time in the future they should be married.
+
+For the next three years he worked hard. He published numerous essays in
+the _Cornhill Magazine_ and his first short stories, "A Lodging for the
+Night," "Will O' the Mill," and the "New Arabian Nights." These were
+followed by his first books of travel, "An Inland Voyage," giving a
+faithful account of the adventures of the _Arethusa_ and the
+_Cigarette_, and "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes."
+
+When the latter was published, Mr. Walter Crane made an illustration for
+it showing R.L.S. under a tree in the foreground in his sleeping-bag,
+smoking, while Modestine contentedly crops grass by his side. Above him
+winds the path he is to take on his journey, encouraging Modestine with
+her burden to a livelier pace with his goad; receiving the blessing of
+the good monks at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Snows; stopping for a
+bite and sup at a wayside tavern; conversing with a fellow traveller by
+the way; and finally disappearing with the sunset over the brow of the
+hill.
+
+Some time previous to all this he had written in a letter: "Leslie
+Stephen, who was down here to lecture, called on me, and took me up to
+see a poor fellow, a poet who writes for him, and who has been eighteen
+months in our Infirmary, and may be for all I know eighteen months more.
+Stephen and I sat on a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in
+his bed with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as cheerfully as
+if he had been in a king's palace of blue air."
+
+This was William Ernest Henley, and his brave determination to live and
+work, though he knew he must ever remain in a maimed condition, roused
+Stevenson's sincere admiration. With his usual impetuous generosity, he
+brought him books and other comforts to make his prolonged stay in the
+infirmary less wearisome and a warm friendship sprang up between them.
+
+As Henley grew stronger they planned to work together and write plays.
+Stevenson had done nothing of the kind since he was nineteen. Now they
+chose to use the same plot that he had experimented with at that time.
+It was the story of the notorious Deacon Brodie of Edinburgh, which both
+considered contained good material for a play.
+
+"A great man in his day was the Deacon; well seen in good society,
+crafty with his hands as a cabinet-maker, and one who could sing a song
+with taste. Many a citizen was proud to welcome the Deacon to supper,
+and dismiss him with regret ... who would have been vastly disconcerted
+had he known how soon, and in what guise his visitor returned. Many
+stories are told of this redoubtable Edinburgh burgher.... A friend of
+Brodie's ... told him of a projected visit to the country, and
+afterwards detained by some affairs, put it off and stayed the night in
+town. The good man had lain some time awake; it was far on in the small
+hours by the Tron bell; when suddenly there came a crack, a jar, a faint
+light. Softly he clambered out of bed and up to a false window which
+looked upon another room, and there, by the glimmer of a thieves'
+lantern, was his good friend the Deacon in a mask."
+
+At length after a certain robbery in one of the government offices the
+Deacon was suspected. He escaped to Holland, but was arrested in
+Amsterdam as he was about to start for America. He was brought back to
+Edinburgh, was tried and convicted and hanged on the second of October,
+1788, at the west end of the Tolbooth, which was the famous old
+Edinburgh prison known as the Heart of Midlothian.
+
+[Illustration: Edinburgh Castle]
+
+This story of Brodie had always interested Stevenson since he had heard
+it as a child, and a cabinet made by the clever Deacon himself formed
+part of the furniture of his nursery.
+
+"Deacon Brodie" and other plays were finished and produced, but never
+proved successful. Indeed, the money came in but slowly from any of his
+writings and, aside from the critics, it was many a long day before he
+was appreciated by the people of his own city and country. They refused
+to believe that "that daft laddie Stevenson," who had so often shocked
+them by his eccentric ways and scorn of conventions, could do anything
+worth while. So by far his happiest times were spent out of Scotland,
+principally in London, where a membership in the Savile Club added to
+his enjoyment. Here he met several interesting men, among them Edmund
+William Gosse and Sidney Colvin, both writers and literary critics, with
+whom he became very intimate.
+
+"My experience of Stevenson," writes Mr. Gosse, "during these first
+years was confined to London upon which he would make sudden piratical
+descents, staying a few days or weeks and melting into thin air again.
+He was much at my house, and it must be told that my wife and I, as
+young married people, had possessed ourselves of a house too large for
+our slender means immediately to furnish. The one person who thoroughly
+approved of our great bare absurd drawing room was Louis, who very
+earnestly dealt with us on the immorality of chairs and tables, and
+desired us to sit always, as he delighted to sit, upon hassocks on the
+floor. Nevertheless, as armchairs and settees straggled into existence,
+he handsomely consented to use them, although never in the usual way,
+but with his legs thrown sidewise over the arms of them, or the head of
+a sofa treated as a perch. In particular, a certain shelf with cupboards
+below, attached to a bookcase, is worn with the person of Stevenson, who
+would spend half an evening, while passionately discussing some question
+... leaping sidewise in a seated posture to the length of this shelf and
+back again.
+
+"... These were the days when he most frequented the Savile Club, and
+the lightest and most vivacious part of him there came to the surface.
+He might spend the morning in work or business, and would then come to
+the club for luncheon. If he were so fortunate as to find a congenial
+companion disengaged, or to induce them to throw over their engagements,
+he would lead him off to the smoking-room, and there spend an afternoon
+in the highest spirits and the most brilliant and audacious talk.
+
+"He was simply bubbling with quips and jests. I am anxious that his
+laughter-loving mood should not be forgotten, because later on it was
+partly, but I think never wholly quenched, by ill health, responsibility
+and advance of years.
+
+"His private thoughts and prospects must often have been of the
+gloomiest, but he seems to have borne his unhappiness with a courage as
+high as he ever afterwards displayed."
+
+Sidney Colvin he met some time previous while visiting relatives in
+England, and their friendship was renewed when they met again in
+London; a friendship which lasted throughout their lives and which even
+the distance of two seas failed to obliterate. They kept up a lively
+correspondence and Mr. Colvin aided him with the publication of his
+writings while he was absent from his own country. After his death,
+according to Stevenson's wishes, Mr. Colvin edited a large collection of
+his letters and in the notes which he added paid his friend many
+splendid tributes which show him to be a fair critic as well as an
+ardent admirer. "He had only to speak," he says, "in order to be
+recognized in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman, and
+within the first five minutes for a master spirit and man of genius."
+
+Louis's long absences from home often troubled his mother and caused her
+to complain when writing. In one answer to her about this time he said:
+
+"You must not be vexed at my absences, you must understand I shall be a
+nomad, more or less, until my days be done. You don't know how much I
+used to long for it in the old days; how I used to go and look at the
+trains leaving, and wish to go with them. And now, you know, that I have
+a little more that is solid under my feet, you must take my nomadic
+habit as a part of me. Just wait till I am in swing and you will see
+that I shall pass more of my life with you than elsewhere; only take me
+as I am and give me time. I _must_ be a bit of a vagabond."
+
+For all so little of his writing was ever done in his own country,
+nevertheless he turned to Scotland again and again for the setting of
+his stories and the subject of his essays. Although he often spoke
+harshly of Edinburgh when at home, he paid her many loving tributes in
+writing of her in a foreign land: "The quaint grey-castled city where
+the bells clash of a Sunday, and the wind squalls, and the salt showers
+fly and beat.... I do not even know if I desire to live there, but let
+me hear in some far land a kindred voice sing out 'Oh, why left I my
+hame?' and it seems at once as if no beauty under the kind heavens, and
+no society of the wise and good, can repay me for my absence from my own
+country. And although I think I would rather die elsewhere, yet in my
+heart of hearts I long to be buried among good Scotch clods. I will say
+it fairly, it grows on me with every year; there are no stars so lovely
+as the Edinburgh street lamps. When I forget thee, Auld Reekie, may my
+right hand forget its cunning."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+AMATEUR EMIGRANT
+
+ "Hope went before them
+  And the world was wide."
+
+
+In the summer of 1879 R.L.S. was once more seized with the desire to
+roam and to roam farther than ever before. California had been beckoning
+to him for some time, and in August he suddenly made up his mind, and
+with scarcely a word of farewell to his family and friends he embarked
+on the steamship _Devonia_, bound for New York.
+
+Partly for the sake of economy, for he determined to pay his own way on
+this venture, and partly because he was anxious to experience emigrant
+life, he engaged passage in the second cabin, which in those days
+differed very little from the steerage. The main advantages were a
+trifle better food and a cabin to himself with a table where he could
+write.
+
+In his usual way he soon made acquaintance with his fellow passengers
+and did them many a friendly turn. They took him for one of themselves
+and showed little curiosity as to where he came from, who he was, or
+where he was going. He says: "The sailors called me 'mate,' the officers
+addressed me as 'my man,' my comrades accepted me without hesitation for
+a person of their own character and experience. One, a mason himself,
+believed I was a mason, several, among these at least one of the seamen,
+judged me to be a petty officer in the American navy; and I was so often
+set down for a practical engineer that at last I had not the heart to
+deny it."
+
+The emigrants were from many countries, though the majority were Scotch
+and Irish bound for the new world with the hope of meeting with better
+fortune than they had had in the old, and they whiled away the days at
+sea in their several ways, making the best of their discomforts and
+cheering one another when they grew lonely or homesick for those they
+had left behind.
+
+When the weather was good their spirits rose and there were many rounds
+of singing and story-telling as they sat clustered together like bees
+under the lee of the deck-house, and in all of these Stevenson joined
+heartily.
+
+"We were indeed a musical ship's company," he says, "and cheered our way
+into exile with the fiddle, the accordion, and the songs of all nations,
+good, bad or indifferent--Scottish, English, Irish, Russian or
+Norse--the songs were received with generous applause. Once or twice, a
+recitation, very spiritedly rendered in a powerful Scotch accent, varied
+the proceedings; and once we sought in vain to dance a quadrille, eight
+men of us together, to the music of the violin. The performers were
+humorous, frisky fellows, who loved to cut capers in private life; but
+as soon as they were arranged for the dance, they conducted themselves
+like so many mutes at a funeral. I have never seen decorum pushed so
+far; and as this was not expected, the quadrille was soon whistled off,
+and the dancers departed.
+
+"But the impulse to sing was strong, and triumphed over modesty and even
+the inclemencies of the sea and sky. On one rough Saturday night, we got
+together by the main deck-house, in a place sheltered from the wind and
+rain. Some clinging to the ladder which led to the hurricane-deck and
+the rest knitting arms or taking hands, we made a ring to support the
+women in the violent lurching of the ship, and when we were thus
+disposed, sang to our hearts' content.
+
+"There was a single chess-board and a single pack of cards. Sometimes as
+many as twenty of us would be playing dominoes for love. There were
+feats of dexterity, puzzles for the intelligence and a regular daily
+competition to guess the vessel's progress; at twelve o'clock when the
+result was published in the wheel house, came to be a moment of
+considerable interest.... We had beside, romps in plenty. Puss in the
+Corner, which we rebaptized, in more manly style, Devil and Four
+Corners, was my favorite game; but there were many who preferred
+another, the humor of which was to box a person's ears until he found
+out who cuffed him."
+
+The voyage, which lasted ten days, was uneventful except for some rough
+weather when Stevenson found his cabin most stuffy and uncomfortable. He
+was not really ill, however, and spent much of the time finishing a tale
+called "The Story of a Lie," while his table played "Bob Jerry with the
+ink bottle." On his arrival in New York the story was sent back to
+London with the following letter to Sidney Colvin:
+
+
+"On Board S.S. Devonia an hour or two out of New York, Aug., 1879.
+
+"MY DEAR COLVIN:
+
+"I have finished my story. The handwriting is not good because of the
+ship's misconduct; thirty-one pages in ten days at sea is not bad. I am
+not very well; bad food, bad air and hard work have brought me down.
+But the spirits keep good. The voyage has been most interesting and will
+make, if not a series of Pall Mall articles, at least the first part of
+a new book. The last weight on me has been trying to keep notes for this
+purpose. Indeed I have worked like a horse and am tired as a donkey. If
+I should have to push on far by rail, I shall bring nothing but my fine
+bones to port.
+
+"Goodbye to you all. I suppose it is now late afternoon with you all
+across the seas. What shall I find over here? I dare not wonder.--Ever
+yours R.L.S."
+
+
+As California was the goal he aimed for, in spite of his fatigue after
+ten days of poor living and the sea, he determined to push on
+immediately in an emigrant train bound for the Pacific coast.
+
+On reaching port he and a man named Jones, with whom he had had more in
+common than with any of his other fellow passengers, landed together.
+
+"Jones and I issued into West Street, sitting on some straw in the
+bottom of an open baggage wagon. It rained miraculously, and from that
+moment till on the following night I left New York, there was scarce a
+lull, and no cessation of the downpour....
+
+"It took but a few moments, though it cost a good deal of money, to be
+rattled along West Street to our destination: Reunion House, No. 10 West
+Street, 'kept by one Mitchell.'
+
+"Here I was at last in America and was soon out upon the New York
+streets, spying for things foreign....
+
+"The following day I had a thousand and one things to do; only the day
+to do them in and a journey across the continent before me in the
+evening.... It rained with potent fury; every now and then I had to get
+under cover for a while in order, so to speak, to give my mackintosh a
+rest; for under this continued drenching it began to grow damp on the
+inside. I went to banks, post-offices, railway offices, restaurants,
+publishers, book sellers and money changers.
+
+"I was so wet when I got back to Mitchell's toward evening, that I had
+simply to divest myself of my shoes, socks and trousers, and leave them
+behind for the benefit of New York City. No fire could have dried them
+ere I had to start; and to pack them in their present condition was to
+spread ruin among my other possessions. With a heavy heart I said
+farewell to them as they lay a pulp in the middle of a pool upon the
+floor of Mitchell's kitchen. I wonder if they are dry by now."
+
+That night he joined a party of emigrants bound for the West, the weight
+of his baggage much increased by the result of his day's
+purchases--Bancroft's "History of the United States" in six fat volumes.
+So in less than twenty-four hours after landing on one coast he was on
+his way to the other.
+
+If at times he had been uncomfortable on the steamer he was ten times
+more so on the train. It is hard to realize in these days of easy
+travelling what the discomforts of riding in the emigrant trains were;
+crowded together in badly lighted, badly ventilated cars, with stiff
+wooden benches on either side, which were most uncomfortable to sit on
+and next to impossible to lie down upon. Meals were taken as best they
+might when they stopped at way stations while some bought milk and eggs
+and made a shift to cook themselves a meal or brew a cup of tea on the
+stove at the end of the car.
+
+Over a week of this sort of slow travelling through the heat of the
+plains was enough to tax the strength and courage of the most robust
+man, let alone one in as delicate health as Stevenson at that time, and
+it is a wonder he ever lived through it. Indeed, he was ill but kept
+cheerful in spite of all, and was interested in the country and the
+sights along the way. His own discomforts seemed to dwindle when he
+contrasted them with those the pioneers endured travelling that same
+direction twenty years before; crawling along in ox-carts with their
+cattle and family possessions; suffering hunger, thirst, and infinite
+weariness, and living in daily terror of attack from the Indians.
+
+He made note of all he saw and the doings of his fellow emigrants, to be
+used later on. Letters to Henley and Colvin en route are interesting.
+
+
+"In the Emigrant Train from New York to San Francisco, Aug., 1879.
+
+DEAR COLVIN,--I am in the cars between Pittsburg and Chicago, just now
+bowling through Ohio. I am taking charge of a kid, whose mother is
+asleep, with one eye while I write you this with the other. I reached
+N.Y. Sunday night, and by five o'clock Monday was underway for the
+West.--It is now about ten on Wednesday morning, so I have already been
+forty hours in the cars. It is impossible to lie down in them, which
+must end by being very wearying....
+
+"No man is any use until he has dared everything; I feel just now as if
+I had, and so might become a man. 'If ye have faith like a grain of
+mustard seed.' That is so true! Just now I have faith as big as a cigar
+case, I will not say die, and I do not fear man nor fortune.--R.L.S."
+
+
+"Crossing Nebraska, Saturday, Aug. 23, 1879.
+
+"My Dear Henley,--I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party
+from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat prairie upon all
+hands.... When we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight
+travel together, the kine first, the man after, the whole plain is heard
+singing with cicadae. This is a pause, as you may see from the writing.
+What happened to the old pedestrian emigrants; what was the tedium
+suffered by the Indians and trappers of our youth, the imagination
+trembles to conceive. This is now Saturday, 23rd, and I have been
+steadily travelling since I parted from you at St. Pancras. It is a
+strange vicissitude from the Savile Club to this; I sleep with a man
+from Pennsylvania who has been in the Navy Yard, and mess with him and
+the Missouri bird already alluded to. We have a tin wash-bowl among
+four, I wear nothing but a shirt and a pair of trousers and never button
+my shirt. When I land for a meal, I pass my coat and feel dressed. This
+life is to last until Friday, Saturday or Sunday next. It is a strange
+affair to be an emigrant, as I hope you shall see in a future work. I
+wonder if this will be legible; my present station on the wagon roof,
+though airy, compared to the cars, is both dirty and insecure. I can see
+the track straight before and straight behind me to either horizon....
+
+"Our journey is through ghostly deserts, sage brush and alkali, and
+rocks without form or color, a sad corner of the world. I confess I am
+not jolly, but mighty calm, in my distresses. My illness is a subject of
+great mirth to some of my fellow travellers, and I smile rather sickly
+at their jests.
+
+"We are going along Bitter Creek just now, a place infamous in the
+history of emigration, a place I shall remember myself among the
+blackest.--R.L.S."
+
+
+When California was finally reached he decided to rest and recover
+strength by camping out for a few days in the Coast Range Mountains
+beyond Monterey, but the anxiety and strain of the long journey had been
+greater than he realized, and he broke down and became very ill. For two
+nights he lay out under the trees in a kind of stupor and at length was
+rescued by two frontiersmen in charge of a goat-ranch, who took him to
+their cabin and cared for him until he partly recovered.
+
+"Here is another curious start in my life," he wrote to Sidney Colvin.
+"I am living at an Angora goat-ranch, in the Coast Line Mountains,
+eighteen miles from Monterey. I was camping out, but got so sick that
+the two rancheros took me in and tended me. One is an old bear hunter,
+seventy-two years old, and a captain from the Mexican War; the other a
+pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when
+California was taken by the States. They are both true frontiersmen, and
+most kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the bear hunter, is my physician,
+and I obey him like an oracle....
+
+"I am now lying in an upper chamber, with the clinking of goat bells in
+my ears, which proves to me that the goats are come home and it will
+soon be time to eat. The old bear hunter is doubtless now infusing tea;
+and Tom the Indian will come in with his gun in a few moments....
+
+"The business of my life stands pretty nigh still. I work at my notes of
+the voyage. It will not be very like a book of mine; but perhaps none
+the less successful for that. I will not deny that I feel lonely
+to-day.... I have not yet had a word from England, partly, I suppose,
+because I have not yet written for my letters to New York; do not blame
+me for this neglect, if you knew all I have been through, you would
+wonder I had done as much as I have. I teach the ranch children reading
+in the morning, for the mother is from home sick.
+
+"Ever your affectionate friend.
+
+"R.L.S."
+
+
+As soon as Stevenson was well enough he returned to Monterey and fell to
+working upon several short stories and the notes of his voyage, which he
+brought together and published later under the titles "The Amateur
+Emigrant" and "Across the Plains."
+
+Monterey in those days was a small Mexican town; "a place of two or
+three streets economically paved with sea-sand, and two or three lanes,
+which were the water courses in the rainy season.... The houses were,
+for the most part, built of unbaked adobe brick....
+
+"There was no activity but in and around the saloons, where the people
+sat almost all day playing cards. The smallest excursion was made on
+horseback. You would scarcely ever see the main street without a horse
+or two tied to posts, and making a fine figure with their Mexican
+housings. In a place so exclusively Mexican as Monterey, you saw not
+only Mexican saddles, but true Vaquero riding--men always at a hand
+gallop, up hill and down dale, and round the sharpest corners, urging
+their horses with cries and gesticulations and cruel rotary spurs,
+checking them dead, with a touch, or wheeling them right about face in a
+square yard. Spanish was the language of the street."
+
+He lodged with a doctor and his wife, and took his meals at the little
+restaurant kept by Jules Simoneau, "a most pleasant old boy," with whom
+he played chess and discussed the universe daily.
+
+About the middle of December he pushed on to San Francisco, and prepared
+to settle down and work for an indefinite time. Though he had known but
+few people in Monterey, nevertheless it was a social little place in
+comparison to a great city like San Francisco, where Stevenson found
+himself indeed a stranger and friendless and learned for the first time
+in his life what it really meant to be lonely.
+
+Funds were running low; so he secured the cheapest possible lodging and
+took his meals at various small restaurants, living at the rate of
+seventy cents a day.
+
+On December 26 he wrote: "For four days I have spoken to no one but my
+landlady or landlord or the restaurant waiters. This is not a gay way to
+pass Christmas, is it?" But some days later, nothing daunted, he added:
+"I lead a pretty happy life, though you might not think it. I have great
+fun trying to be economical, which I find as good a game of play as any
+other. I have no want of occupation and though I rarely see any one to
+speak to, have little time to worry."
+
+To make matters worse, letters containing money went astray and word
+came that some articles submitted to his publishers in England, on which
+he had depended for funds, were not satisfactory, and this forced him to
+reduce his living expenses to forty-five cents a day. The letters from
+home were most unsatisfactory and lacked the kind of news he longed for.
+"Not one soul ever gives me any _news_," he complained to Sidney Colvin,
+"about people or things, everybody writes me sermons; it is good for me,
+but hardly the food necessary for a man who lives all alone on
+forty-five cents a day, and sometimes less, with quantities of hard work
+and many heavy thoughts. If one of you could write me a letter with a
+jest in it, a letter like what is written to real people in the world--I
+am still flesh and blood--I should enjoy it. Simpson did the other day,
+and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine--man alive I want
+gossip."
+
+Day in and day out he worked doggedly, fighting discouragement, with
+little strength or inspiration to write anything very worth while.
+
+To cap all, his landlady's little boy fell ill, and Stevenson, who had a
+great love and sympathy for all children, helped to nurse him, and this
+proved too much in the nervous and exhausted state he was in. The boy
+recovered, but Stevenson fell ill again, and for six weeks hovered
+between life and death.
+
+This seems to have been the turning-point in his ill luck. Toward the
+middle of February, as he slowly began to mend, he was cheered on by
+long letters from home, full of anxiety for his health and advances of
+money from his father, with strict instructions that from now on he was
+no longer to stint and deny himself the bare necessities of life, as he
+had been doing. Later, in April, came a telegram from Thomas Stevenson
+saying that in future Louis was to count on an income of two hundred and
+fifty pounds a year.
+
+Cheered with the prospect of an easier road ahead of him, he struggled
+back to life once more with a strong resolve to work harder and make
+those at home proud of him.
+
+"It was a considerable shock to my pride to break down," he wrote to a
+friend, "but there it's done and can not be helped. Had my health held
+out another month, I should have made a year's income, but breaking
+down when I did, I am surrounded by unfinished works. It is a good thing
+my father was on the spot, or I should have had to work and die."
+
+Early in the spring he and Mrs. Osbourne met again, and on May 19, 1880,
+they were married in San Francisco.
+
+For the rest of his life Stevenson had no cause to complain of
+loneliness, for in his wife he had an "inseparable sharer of all his
+adventures; the most open-hearted of friends to all those who loved him;
+the most shrewd and stimulating critic of his work; and in sickness,
+despite her own precarious health, the most devoted and most efficient
+of nurses."
+
+Immediately after their marriage Stevenson and his wife and stepson--and
+the dog--went to the Coast Range Mountains and, taking possession of an
+old deserted miner's camp, practically lived out-of-doors for the next
+few months, with no neighbors aside from a hunter and his family.
+
+This was healthy, but the life of a squatter has its limitations, and
+their trials and tribulations during these weeks Stevenson told most
+amusingly in "The Silverado Squatters."
+
+Gradually a longing began to come to R.L.S. to see those at home once
+more and have them know his wife. This desire grew so from day to day
+that July found them bidding good-by to California, and on the 7th of
+August they sailed from New York for Liverpool.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SCOTLAND AGAIN
+
+ "Bells upon the city are ringing in the night,
+  High above the gardens are the houses full of light,
+  On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free,
+  And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.
+
+ "We canna break the bonds that God decreed to bind,
+  Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind,
+  Far away from home O, it's still for you and me
+  That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie."
+
+
+On his return to Scotland the spell of his own land fell upon R.L.S. for
+the first time. He realized now how he loved it spite of its bad
+climate, how much there was at home waiting for him. "After all," he
+said, "new countries, sun, music, and all the rest, can never take down
+our gusty, rainy, smoky, grim old city out of the first place it has
+been making for itself in the bottom of my soul."
+
+But he had returned only to be banished. The doctors found his lungs
+too weak to risk Edinburgh winters and advised him to try the Alps.
+
+Accordingly a cottage was rented in Davos Platz, a health resort. There
+and at similar places near by they spent the next few winters with
+visits to England and France between. Switzerland never suited
+Stevenson. He disliked living among invalids, and with his love for
+exploring the nooks and corners of any spot he was in he felt like a
+prisoner when he found himself shut in a valley among continual snow
+with few walks possible for him to take. "The mountains are about me
+like a trap," he complained. "You can not foot it up a hillside and
+behold the sea on a great plain, but live in holes and corners and can
+change only one for the other."
+
+Tobogganing was the only sport of Davos Platz he really enjoyed, and he
+pursued that to his heart's content. "Perhaps the true way to toboggan
+is alone and at night," he said. "First comes the tedious climb
+dragging your instrument behind you. Next a long breathing space, alone
+with the snow and pine woods, cold, silent and solemn to the heart. Then
+you push off; the toboggan fetches away, she begins to feel the hill, to
+glide, to swim, to gallop. In a breath you are out from under the
+pine-trees and the whole heaven full of stars reels and flashes
+overhead."
+
+He accomplished little work at this time. Sometimes for days he would be
+unable to write at all. But the little boy who had once told his mother,
+"I have been trying to make myself happy," was the same man now who
+could say: "I was never bored in my life." When unable to do anything
+else he would build houses of cards or lie in bed and model little
+figures in clay. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind distracted
+from the stories that crowded his brain and he had not strength to put
+on paper. His one horror, the fear that urged him on to work feverishly
+when he was suffering almost beyond endurance, was the thought that his
+illness might one day make him a helpless invalid.
+
+The splendid part to think of is that no hint of his dark days and pains
+crept into his writings or saddened those who came to see him. Complaint
+he kept to himself, prayed that he might "continue to be eager to be
+happy," lived with the best that was in him from day to day, and the
+words that went forth from his sick-room have cheered and encouraged
+thousands.
+
+When asked why he wrote so many stories of pirates and adventurers with
+few women to soften them he replied: "I suppose it's the contrast; I
+have always admired great strength, even in a pirate. Courage has
+interested me more than anything else."
+
+He and his stepson had grown to be great chums. At Silverado Lloyd had
+been seized with a desire to write stories and had set up a toy
+printing-press which turned off several tales. At Davos Platz they both
+tried their hand at illustrating these stories with pictures cut on
+wood-blocks and gayly colored. Lloyd's room was quite a gallery of these
+artistic attempts. But their favorite diversion was to play at a war
+game with lead soldiers. In after-years Lloyd wrote his recollections of
+the days they spent together enjoying this fun and he says: "The war
+game was constantly improved and elaborated, until from a few hours, a
+war took weeks to play, and the critical operations in the attic
+monopolized half our thoughts. This attic was a most chilly and dismal
+spot, reached by a crazy ladder, and unlit save for a single frosted
+window; so low at the eaves and so dark that we could seldom stand
+upright, nor see without a candle. Upon the attic floor a map was
+roughly drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers,
+towns, bridges, and roads of two classes. Here we would play by the
+hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an intentness,
+zest, and excitement that I shall never forget.
+
+"The mimic battalions marched and counter-marched, changed by measured
+evolutions from column formation into line, with cavalry screens in
+front and massed support behind, in the most approved military fashion
+of to-day."
+
+Neither of them ever grew too old for this sport. Year after year they
+went back to the game. Even when they went to Samoa they laid out a
+campaign room with maps chalked on the floor.
+
+In the spring of 1885 Thomas Stevenson purchased a house at Bournemouth,
+England, near London, as a present for his daughter-in-law.
+
+They named the cottage "Skerryvore," after the famous lighthouse he had
+helped to build in his young days, and it was their home for the next
+three years--busy ones for R.L.S.
+
+[Illustration: Skerryvore Cottage, Bournemouth]
+
+It was a real joy to have his father and mother and Bob Stevenson with
+them again and his friends in London frequently drop in for a visit.
+
+His health was never worse than during the Bournemouth days. He seldom
+went beyond his own garden-gate but lived, as he says, "like a weevil in
+a biscuit." Yet he never worked harder or accomplished more. He wrote in
+bed and out of bed, sick or well, poems, plays, short stories, and
+verses.
+
+He finished "Treasure Island," the book that gained him his first
+popularity, and wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which made him famous
+at home and abroad.
+
+"Treasure Island" had been started some time previous to please Lloyd,
+who asked him to write a "good story." It all began with a map.
+Stevenson always loved maps, and one day during a picture-making bout he
+had drawn a fine one. "It was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully
+colored," he says. "The shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it
+contained harbors that pleased me like sonnets.... I ticketed my
+performance Treasure Island."
+
+Immediately the island began to take life and swarm with people, all
+sorts of strange scenes began to take place upon it, and as he gazed at
+his map Stevenson discovered the plot for the "good story."
+
+"It is horrid fun," he wrote, "and begins in the Admiral Benbow public
+house on the Devon coast; all about a map and a treasure and a mutiny,
+and a derelict ship ... and a doctor and a sea-cook with one leg with
+the chorus 'yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,' ... No women in the story,
+Lloyd orders."
+
+Parts of the coast at Monterey flashed back to his mind and helped him
+to picture the scenery of his "Treasure Island." "It was just such a
+place as the Monterey sand hills the hero John Hawkins found himself on
+leaving his mutinous shipmates. It was just such a thicket of live oak
+growing low along the sand like brambles, that he crawled and dodged
+when he heard the voices of the pirates near him and saw Long John
+Silver strike down with his crutch one of his mates who had refused to
+join in his plan for murder."
+
+[Illustration: The Treasure Island map]
+
+As the story grew he read each new chapter aloud to the family in the
+evening. He was writing it for one boy, but found he had more in his
+audience. "My father," he says, "not only heard with delight the daily
+chapter, but set himself actively to collaborate. When the time came for
+Billy Bones' chest to be ransacked, he must have passed the better part
+of a day preparing on the back of a legal envelope an inventory of its
+contents, which I exactly followed, and the name of Flint's old ship,
+the Walrus, was given at his particular request."
+
+When the map was redrawn for the book it was embellished with "blowing
+whales and sailing ships; and my father himself brought into service a
+knack he had of various writing, and elaborately _forged_ the signature
+of Captain Flint and the sailing directions of Billy Bones."
+
+These daily readings were rare treats to those at Skerryvore, for
+Stevenson was a most dramatic reader. "When he came to stand in the
+place of Silver you could almost have imagined you saw the great
+one-legged John Silver, joyous-eyed, on the rolling sea."
+
+The book was not long in springing into popularity. Not only the boys
+enjoyed it but all sorts of staid and sober men became boys once more
+and sat up long after bedtime to finish the tale. Mr. Gladstone caught a
+glimpse of it at a friend's house and did not rest the next day until he
+had procured a copy for himself, and Andrew Lang said: "This is the kind
+of stuff a fellow wants. I don't know when, except Tom Sawyer and the
+Odyssey, that I ever liked a romance so well."
+
+It was translated into many different languages, even appearing serially
+in certain Greek and Spanish papers.
+
+"Kidnapped" followed; a story founded on the Appan murder. David
+Balfour, the hero, was one of his own ancestors; Alan Breck had actually
+lived, and the Alison who ferried Alan and David over to Torryburn was
+one of Cummie's own people. The Highland country where the scenes were
+laid, he had traversed many times, and the Island of Earraid, where
+David was shipwrecked, was the spot where he had spent some of his
+engineering days.
+
+Stevenson had often said the "brownies" in his dreams gave him ideas for
+his tales. At Skerryvore they came to him with a story that among all
+his others is counted the greatest.
+
+"In the small hours one morning," says his wife, "I was awakened by
+cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare I awakened him.
+He said angrily, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey
+tale.'"
+
+The dream was so vivid that he could not rest until he had written off
+the story, and it so possessed him that the first draft was finished
+within three days. It was called "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde."
+
+This story instantly created much discussion. Articles were written
+about it, sermons were preached on it, and letters poured in from all
+sorts of people with their theories about the strange tale. Six months
+after it was published nearly forty thousand copies were sold in
+England alone; but its greatest success was in America where its
+popularity was immediate and its sale enormous.
+
+One day he was attracted by a book of verses about children by Kate
+Greenaway, and wondered why he could not write some too of the children
+he remembered best of all. Scenes and doings in the days spent at
+Colinton with his swarm of cousins; the games they had played and the
+people they had known all trooped back with other memories of Edinburgh
+days. As he recalled these children, they tripped from his pen until he
+had a delightful collection of verses and determined to bring them
+together in a book.
+
+First he called it "The Penny Whistle," but soon changed the title to "A
+Child's Garden of Verses" and dedicated it, with the following poem, to
+the only one he said who would really understand the verses, the one who
+had done so much to make his childhood days happy:
+
+
+           TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM
+
+               FROM HER BOY
+
+ "For the long nights you lay awake
+  And watched for my unworthy sake;
+  For your most comfortable hand
+  That led me through the uneven land;
+  For all the story-books you read;
+  For all the pains you comforted;
+  For all you pitied, all you bore
+  In sad and happy days of yore;--
+  My second Mother, my first wife,
+  The angel of my infant life--
+  From the sick child, now well and old,
+  Take, nurse, the little book you hold!
+
+ "And grant it, Heaven, that all who read,
+  May find as dear a nurse at need,
+  And every child who lists my rhyme,
+  In the bright fireside, nursery clime,
+  May hear it in as kind a voice
+  As made my childish days rejoice."
+
+
+"Of course," he said, speaking of this dedication when he wrote to
+Cummie about the book, "this is only a flourish, like taking off one's
+hat, but still a person who has taken the trouble to write things does
+not dedicate them to anyone without meaning it; and you must try to
+take this dedication in place of a great many things that I might have
+said, and that I ought to have done; to prove that I am not altogether
+unconscious of the great debt of gratitude I owe you."
+
+[Illustration: Facsimile of letter sent to Cummy with "An Inland
+Voyage"]
+
+If Thomas Stevenson had been one of the first to doubt his boy's
+literary ability, he was equally quick to acknowledge himself mistaken.
+He was proud of his brilliant son, keenly interested in whatever he was
+working on and, during the days spent together at Skerryvore, gave him
+valuable aid in his writing.
+
+To have this old-time comradeship with his father, to enjoy his sympathy
+and understanding once more was Stevenson's greatest joy at this time; a
+joy which he sorrowfully realized he must soon part with forever as his
+father's health was failing rapidly.
+
+Thomas Stevenson remained at Skerryvore until April, 1887, when he left
+for a short visit to Edinburgh. While there he became suddenly worse and
+died on the 8th of May.
+
+Louis's greatest reason for remaining in England was gone now, and he
+determined to cross the ocean with his family once more.
+
+His mother willingly gave up her home, her family, her friends, and the
+comforts she had always enjoyed to go with him to a new country, on any
+venture he might propose if his health could only be improved thereby.
+
+On August 21, 1887, Louis bade good-by to Scotland for the last time and
+sailed away from London on the steamship _Ludgate Hill_ for New York.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA
+
+  "Tis a good land to fall in with men, and a pleasant land to see."
+
+        --(_Words spoken by Hendrik Hudson when he first brought his
+           ship through the Narrows and saw the Bay of New York_.)
+
+
+Stevenson's second landing in New York was a great contrast to his
+first. The "Amateur Emigrant" had no one to bid him welcome and Godspeed
+but a West Street tavern-keeper, and now when Mr. Will Low, his old
+friend of Fontainebleau days, hastened to the dock to welcome him on the
+_Ludgate Hill_, he found the author of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" already
+surrounded by reporters.
+
+The trip had done him good in spite of their passage having been an
+unusually rough one, with numerous discomforts. The _Ludgate Hill_ was
+not an up-to-date liner and she carried a very mixed cargo. The very
+fact of her being a tramp ship and that the passengers were free to be
+about with the men and officers, stay in the wheel-house, and enjoy a
+real sea life, delighted Stevenson, and he wrote back to Sidney Colvin:
+
+"I enjoyed myself more than I could have hoped on board our floating
+menagerie; stallions and monkeys and matches made our cargo; and the
+vast continent of the incongruities rolled the while like a haystack;
+and the stallions stood hypnotized by the motion, looking through the
+port at our dinner table, and winnied when the crockery was broken; and
+the little monkeys stared at one another in their cages ... and the big
+monkey, Jacko scoured about the ship and rested willingly in my arms ...
+the other passengers, when they were not sick, looked on and laughed.
+Take all this picture, and make it roll till the bell shall sound
+unexpected notes and the fittings shall break loose in our state rooms,
+and you have the voyage of the Ludgate Hill. She arrived in the port of
+New York without beer, porter, soda-water, curacoa, fresh meat, or fresh
+water, and yet we lived and we regret her."
+
+After a short visit with friends in Newport they returned to New York
+and settled down for a time in the Hotel St. Stephen, on 11th Street,
+near University Place, to make plans for their winter's trip.
+
+Soon after their arrival "Jekyll and Hyde" was dramatized and produced
+with great success. When it was known that the author of this remarkable
+story was in the city, people flocked from all sides to call on him, and
+fairly wearied him with their attentions, although he liked to see them
+and made many interesting acquaintances at the time.
+
+Washington Square was one of his favorite spots in New York, and he
+spent many hours there watching the children playing about. A day he
+always recalled with special pleasure was the one when he had spent a
+whole forenoon in the Square talking with Mark Twain.
+
+Among those who were anxious to know Stevenson was the American
+sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens. He had been delighted with his writings
+and regretted he had not met him in Paris when he and Mr. Low had been
+there together. "If Stevenson ever comes to New York," he said to Mr.
+Low, "I want to meet him," and added that he would consider it a great
+privilege if Stevenson would permit him to make his portrait.
+
+It was with much pleasure, therefore, that Mr. Low brought them
+together, and they took to one another immediately. "I like your
+sculptor. What a splendid straightforward and simple fellow he is," said
+Stevenson; and St. Gaudens's comment after their first meeting was:
+"Astonishingly young, not a bit like an invalid and a bully fellow."
+
+Stevenson readily consented to sit for his portrait, and they spent many
+delightful hours together while the sketches were being made for it.
+
+One day the sculptor brought his eight-year-old son, Homer, with him,
+and years afterward gave the following description of the child's visit:
+
+"On the way I endeavored to impress on the boy the fact that he was
+about to see a man whom he must remember all his life. It was a lovely
+day and as I entered the room Stevenson lay as usual on rather a high
+bed. I presented Homer to him ... but since my son's interest,
+notwithstanding my injunctions, was to say the least far from
+enthusiastic, I sent him out to play.
+
+[Illustration: Bas-relief of Stevenson by Augustus Saint Gaudens]
+
+"I then asked Stevenson to pose but that was not successful ... all the
+gestures being forced and affected. Therefore I suggested to him that if
+he would try to write, some natural attitude might result. He assented
+and taking a sheet of paper ... he pulled his knees up and began.
+Immediately his attitude was such that I was enabled to create something
+of use and continued drawing while he wrote with an occasional smile.
+Presently I finished and told him there was no necessity for his writing
+any more. He did not reply but proceeded for quite a while. Then he
+folded the paper with deliberation, placed it in an envelope, addressed
+it, and handed it to me. It was to 'Master Homer St. Gaudens.'
+
+"I asked him: 'Do you wish me to give this to the boy?'
+
+"'Yes,'
+
+"'When? Now?'
+
+"'Oh, no, in five or ten years, or when I am dead.'
+
+"I put it in a safe and here it is:
+
+
+"May 27, 1888.
+
+"DEAR HOMER ST. GAUDENS--Your father has brought you this day to see me
+and tells me it is his hope you may remember the occasion. I am going to
+do what I can to carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years after,
+to see this little scrap of paper and to read what I write. I must begin
+by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the
+introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded
+ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and
+admirable point in your character. You were also,--I use the past tense
+with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I
+am writing,--a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly
+self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must
+pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may perhaps like to know that
+the lean, flushed man in bed, who interested you so little, was in a
+state of mind extremely mingled and unpleasant; harassed with work which
+he thought he was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to which
+you will in time succeed, and yet looking forward to no less a matter
+than a voyage to the South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert
+islands.
+                      "Your father's friend,
+                                 "ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."
+
+
+The portrait was finished in bas-relief and many copies were made of it.
+The most familiar is the one giving only Stevenson's head and
+shoulders, but the splendid big one placed as a memorial to him in St.
+Giles's Cathedral in Edinburgh shows him as he must have looked that day
+lying in bed, writing to Homer St. Gaudens.
+
+Another man in New York whom Stevenson had admired for years and longed
+to meet was General Sherman. The war was long past, and he was then an
+old gentleman living very quietly. One day St. Gaudens took Stevenson to
+call on him, and he was asked afterward if he was at all disappointed in
+his hero.
+
+"Disappointed," he exclaimed. "It was simply magnificent to stand in the
+presence of one who has done what he has, and then to find him so genial
+and human. It was the next thing to seeing Wellington, and I dare say
+the Iron Duke would not have been half so human."
+
+The anticipation of a train trip across the continent was so distasteful
+that a proposed visit to Colorado was given up, and they decided to try
+the climate of the Adirondacks for the winter instead.
+
+They chose Saranac, not far from the Canadian border, and rented a
+cottage there.
+
+The climate was as unpleasant as possible. It rained, snowed, sleeted,
+and froze continually. The cold at times was arctic, the thermometer
+dropping thirty degrees below zero in January. "Venison was crunching
+with ice after being an hour in the oven, and a large lump of ice was
+still unmelted in a pot where water was steaming all around it."
+
+Their cottage was dubbed "Hunter's Home." It was far from the railroad,
+few luxuries were to be had, and they lived a simple life in earnest.
+
+Of course, they had a dog; no "hunter's home" would be complete without
+one, but Louis scouted the idea of adding things as unfitting as plush
+table-covers and upholstered footstools. The table went bare, and he
+fashioned a footstool for his mother out of a log, in true backwoods
+fashion.
+
+His wife and mother found the cold hard to bear, but he stood it
+remarkably well and benefited by it. Saranac reminded him of Scotland,
+he said, without the smell of peats and the heather.
+
+Dressed in a buffalo coat, astrakhan cap, and Indian boots, he and Lloyd
+walked, skated, or went sleighing every day.
+
+His pen was kept busy also. A new novel, "The Master of Ballantrae," was
+started, and he contributed a series of articles to _Scribner's
+Magazine_. For these he was paid a regular sum offered by the publishers
+and agreed upon in advance--a new experience. It made him feel "awfu'
+grand," he told a Scotch friend.
+
+A venture he had been longing to make since a boy was a cruise among the
+islands of the South Seas. While enduring the bitter cold of Saranac
+such hazy ideas as he had had about such a trip began to form themselves
+into a definite scheme. He was anxious for a long voyage; perhaps the
+warm sea air might cure him after all else had failed.
+
+So night after night he and Lloyd eagerly pored over books and maps,
+and the family discussed plans for such an expedition.
+
+When spring came Mrs. Stevenson started for San Francisco to secure, if
+possible, a yacht in which they might undertake such a cruise. If all
+went well Louis and his mother and Lloyd would follow.
+
+While they waited for results they spent the time at Manasquan, on the
+New Jersey coast. There Stevenson and his son enjoyed the sailing, and
+their New York friends came often to see them.
+
+Mr. Low tells of the day at Manasquan when word was received from Mrs.
+Stevenson that she had found a schooner-yacht satisfactory for the
+voyage.
+
+An answer must be sent at once. Her husband telegraphed that they would
+come, but it was not without misgivings that he made this final
+decision. There was much at stake in an uncertain venture of the kind.
+It meant a sacrifice of comfort for his wife and mother, big expense,
+and perhaps no better health in the end.
+
+However, it seemed worth the risk, and having decided to go he began to
+look forward to the trip with boyish delight. "It will be horrid fun,"
+he said, "to be an invalid gentleman on board a yacht, to walk around
+with a spy-glass under your arm, to make landings and trade beads and
+chromos for cocoanuts, and to have the natives swim out to meet you."
+
+He and Lloyd spent hours laying their course and making out lists of
+stores with which to furnish the schooner, regardless of the doubt
+expressed by their friends as to the capacity of the boat. "They calmly
+proceeded with their interminable lists and scorned the criticism of a
+mere land-lubber. All conversation that was not of a nautical character
+failed to hold their interest."
+
+Cheered with strong hopes for Louis's future, the family departed for
+San Francisco on the 28th of May, 1888. Their one regret was the good
+friends they were leaving behind. This particularly affected Louis, but
+he tried to hide his feelings by making all sorts of lively and
+impossible proposals for their joining him later on.
+
+His parting words to Mr. Low were: "There's England over there--and I've
+left it--perhaps I may never go back--and there on the other side of
+this big continent there's another sea rolling in. I loved the Pacific
+in the days when I was at Monterey, and perhaps now it will love me a
+little. I am going to meet it; ever since I was a boy the South Seas
+have laid a spell upon me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+ "Since long ago, a child at home,
+  I read and longed to rise and roam,
+  Where'er I went, what'er I willed,
+  One promised land my fancy filled.
+  Hence the long road my home I made;
+  Tossed much in ships; have often laid
+  Below the uncurtained sky my head,
+  Rain-deluged and wind buffeted;
+  And many a thousand miles I crossed,
+  And corners turned--love's labor lost,
+  Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
+  I came, not hoping, and like one
+  Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
+  And hailed my promised land with cries."
+
+
+Once, while Louis was a discontented student at the University of
+Edinburgh, the premier of New Zealand, Mr. Seed, spent an evening with
+his father and talked about the South Sea Islands until the boy said he
+was "sick with desire to go there."
+
+From that time on a visit to that out-of-the-way corner of the earth was
+a cherished dream, and he read everything he could lay hands on that
+told about it.
+
+While in California, the first time, Mr. Virgil Williams, an artist,
+aroused his interest still more by the accounts of his own trip in the
+South Seas.
+
+Now his opportunity to see them had actually come. He already knew much
+of the kind of places and people they were going among.
+
+Three thousand miles across the open sea lay the Marquesas Islands, the
+first group they hoped to visit, and it was for that port their
+schooner, the _Casco_, turned her head when she was towed out of the
+Golden Gate at dawn on the 28th of June.
+
+Besides the family and a servant, Valentine Roch, who had been with them
+since Bournemouth days, the party consisted of the skipper, Captain
+Otis, who was well acquainted with the Pacific, a crew of four
+deck-hands, and a Japanese cook.
+
+The _Casco_ was a fore-and-aft schooner, ninety-five feet in length, of
+seventy tons' burden. "She had most graceful lines and with her lofty
+masts, white sails and decks, and glittering brass work, was a lovely
+craft to the eye as she sat upon the water."
+
+"I must try to describe the vessel that is to be our home for so long,"
+Mrs. Stevenson, senior, wrote to her sister at Colinton. "From the deck
+you step down into the cockpit, which is our open air drawing room. It
+has seats all around, nicely cushioned, and we sit or lie there most of
+the day. The compass is there, and the wheel, so the man at the wheel
+always keeps us company.... At the bottom of the stairs on the right
+hand side is the captain's room. Straight ahead is the main--or
+after--cabin, a nice bright place with a skylight and four portholes.
+There are four sofas that can be turned into beds if need be, and there
+are lockers under them in which our clothes are stored away. Above and
+behind each sofa is a berth concealed by white lace curtains on brass
+rods, and in these berths we three women are laid away as on shelves
+each night to sleep.
+
+"Opposite the entrance is a mirror let into the wall, with two small
+shelves under it. On each side of this is a door. The one to the right
+leads ... to Lloyd's cabin, and beyond that again is the forward cabin,
+or dining room. The door to the left opens into ... Louis'
+sleeping-room. It is very roomy with both a bed and a sofa in it, so
+that he will be very comfortable....
+
+"The dining room has a long table and chairs. Between the doors a very
+ugly picture of fruit and cake. Louis would fain cover it up if we could
+spare a flag with which to do it. The doors at the further end lead to
+the pantry and galley and beyond these are the men's quarters."
+
+No expense had been spared in building the _Casco_ to make her
+comfortable. She was intended, however, for cruising in the California
+waters and was hardly suited to the rough handling she received during
+the squally weather of the next few months. Fortunately she stood the
+test well and her passengers suffered few discomforts.
+
+Once under way and settled for living, the trip proved quite uneventful.
+The long days were spent on deck reading or working, and Stevenson began
+to gather material for a book on the South Seas. The ship's life suited
+him admirably; every strange fish and new star interested him, and he
+grew stronger hourly in the warm air.
+
+"Since the fifth day," he wrote, "we were left behind by a full-rigged
+English ship ... bound round the Horn, we have not spied a sail, nor a
+land bird, nor a shred of sea-weed. In impudent isolation, the toy
+schooner has plowed her path of snow across the empty deep, far from all
+track of commerce, far from any hand of help; now to the sound of
+slatting sails and stamping sheet blocks, staggering in the turmoil of
+that business falsely called a calm, now, in the assault of squalls
+burying her lee-rail in the sea.... Flying fish, a skimming silver rain
+on the blue sea; a turtle fast asleep in the early morning sunshine;
+the Southern Cross hung thwart the forerigging like the frame of a
+wrecked kite--the pole star and the familiar plough dropping ever lower
+in the wake; these build up thus far the history of our voyage. It is
+singular to come so far and see so infinitely little."
+
+The squalls that came very quickly, frequently broke the monotony of the
+trip. One moment the _Casco_ would be sailing along easily and the "next
+moment, the inhabitants of the cabin were piled one upon another, the
+sea was pouring into the cockpit and spouting in fountains through
+forgotten deadlights, and the steersman stood spinning the wheel for his
+life in a halo of tropical rain."
+
+After twenty-two days at sea they sighted their first island, Nukahiva,
+one of the Marquesan group, and were all on deck before dawn anxiously
+watching for it. They not only looked forward eagerly to the sight of
+land again after so many days on the open ocean, but it was indeed an
+adventure to come to a country totally strange to all of them, where
+few white people had been before.
+
+"Not one soul aboard the Casco had set foot upon the Islands," says
+Stevenson, "or knew except by accident one word of any of the island
+tongues; and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure
+as thrilled the bosom of the discoverers that we drew near these
+problematic shores.
+
+"Before yet the anchor plunged a canoe was already paddling from the
+hamlet. It contained two men: one white, one brown and tattooed across
+the face with bands of blue, both immaculate with white European
+clothes.... Canoe followed canoe till the ship swarmed with stalwart,
+six foot men in every stage of undress ... the more considerable
+tattooed from head to foot in awful patterns ... all talking and we
+could not understand one word; all trying to trade with us who had no
+thought of trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably
+absurd."
+
+All this charmed and delighted Stevenson, who had dreamed many times of
+witnessing just such a scene. He wrote to Cummie that he was living all
+over again many of the stories she had read to him and found them coming
+true about himself.
+
+For six weeks they cruised about among these islands, frequently
+dropping anchor and going ashore for several days. When the natives were
+convinced that they had neither come to trade or to make trouble, but
+were simply interested in them and their country, they made the visitors
+most welcome and showered presents of fruit, mats, baskets, and fans
+upon them.
+
+All were eager to visit the schooner, which they called _Pahi Mani_,
+meaning the shining or the silver ship. The chiefs tried to measure its
+dimensions with their arms. The liveliest curiosity was shown about
+everything; the red velvet cushions, the looking-glasses, and the
+typewriter pleased particularly. A photograph of Queen Victoria hung in
+the fore-cabin and was always described to the island callers as _Vahine
+Haka-iki Beritano_, which meant literally, woman-great-chief Britain. It
+was a surprise to find how much many of them already knew about her.
+
+Some afternoons the _Casco_ swarmed with these strange visitors who were
+always delighted at the refreshments of ship's biscuits and pineapple
+syrup and water offered them. A certain chief was particularly taken
+with a pair of gloves belonging to Mrs. Stevenson, senior. He smelled of
+them, called them British tattooing, and insisted on her putting them on
+and off a great many times.
+
+The entire family fell quickly into the island mode of living; dressed
+as the white inhabitants did; ate all the strange kinds of native food;
+and when ashore lived in the native houses, which resembled bird-cages
+on stilts. The climate suited them to perfection, and Stevenson
+particularly benefited by it, bathing daily in the warm surf and taking
+long walks along the beach in search of strange shells.
+
+"Here we are," his mother wrote to Cummie, "in a little bay surrounded
+by green mountains, on which sheep are grazing, and there are birds very
+like our own 'blackies' singing in the trees. If it were not for the
+groves of cocoanut palms, we might almost fancy ourselves in our own
+dear land. But the climate here is simply perfect. Of course it is hot,
+but there are always fresh breezes.... We have our principal meal at
+twelve o'clock, and spend the after part of the day on shore ...
+bathing, gathering shells, knitting, or reading. Our Japanese cook and
+steward just sets out the table with cold meats, fruit, and cake so that
+we can take our other meal at any time in the evening that suits us.
+
+"Fanny and I are dressed like natives, in two garments. As we have to
+wade to and from the boat in landing and coming back, we discard
+stockings, and on the sands we usually go barefoot entirely. Louis wears
+only a shirt and trousers with the legs and arms rolled up as far as
+they will go, and he is always barefooted. You will therefore not be
+surprised to hear that we are all as red as lobsters. It is a strange
+irresponsible half savage life, and I sometimes wonder if we shall ever
+be able to return to civilized habits again.
+
+[Illustration: South Sea houses]
+
+"The natives are very simple and kindly people. The Roman Catholic
+priests have persuaded them to give up their constant wars and the
+practice of cannibalism, though only within recent years....
+
+"Louis has learned a good many words of the language, and with the help
+of signs can contrive to carry on a conversation, but I have stuck fast
+with two words: '_ka-oha_' which means 'How do you do?' 'thank you,' and
+'good bye,' and I am not quite sure how much else, and '_Mitai_,'
+meaning good, nice, pretty, kind. I don't expect to get beyond these,
+but it is wonderful how much one can express with them....
+
+"The natives have got names for us all. Louis was at first 'the old
+man,' much to his distress; but now they call him '_Ona_' meaning owner
+of the yacht, a name he greatly prefers to the first. Fanny is _Vahine_,
+or wife; I am the _old woman_, and Lloyd rejoices in the name of _Mate
+Karahi_, the young man with glass eyes (spectacles). Perhaps it is a
+compliment here to be called old, as it is in China, at any rate, one
+native told Louis that he himself was old, but his mother was not!...
+
+"A native dance was got up for our benefit. None of the dancing-women
+appeared, but five men dressed in shirt and trousers, danced together
+with spirit and grace. The music was provided by a drum, made out of an
+old tin box. Many of the steps reminded me of a Highland reel, but were
+curiously mixed up with calisthenic, and even gymnastic exercises; the
+hands in particular were used very gracefully, and they often took off
+their hats and waved them to and fro. But they also climbed on each
+other's shoulders, and did other strange things. After dancing for some
+time, they sang songs to us in a curious, low, weird kind of crooning.
+Altogether it was a strange sort of afternoon party!"
+
+The Marquesas Islands belong to the French, and the commandant in
+charge was most cordial to Stevenson, inviting him to his house
+frequently during his stay in the islands. When at the expiration of six
+weeks it was time for the _Casco_ to weigh anchor and the party sailed
+on to explore still farther, they left behind them many friends who
+regretted their departure. Here as elsewhere in the South Seas,
+Stevenson showed his sympathy and kindliness toward the island people
+regardless of who they were or their rank. White or half-caste priest,
+missionary, or trader, all were treated the same. No bribe, he said,
+would induce him to call the natives savages.
+
+Mr. Johnstone, an English resident in the South Seas at the time of
+Stevenson's visit, says: "His inborn courtesy more than any of his other
+good traits, endeared him to his fellows in the Pacific ... in the
+hearts of our Island people he built a monument more lasting than stone
+or brass."
+
+The recollection of the history of his own wild Scottish Islands, the
+people and conditions his grandfather found among them, helped him to
+understand these people and account for many of their actions. Though at
+opposite ends of the earth, many of their customs and legends
+corresponded. The dwellers in the Hebrides in the old days likewise
+lived in clans with their chief and struggled to retain their
+independence against an invading power.
+
+Tahiti, one of the group of Society Islands, was their next stopping
+place. Before starting a new mate was shipped, who was more familiar
+with the course, which lay through the Dangerous Archipelago--a group of
+low, badly lighted islands.
+
+The Society Islands are most beautiful, Tahiti probably the gem of them
+all, but on arriving Stevenson was in no condition to appreciate their
+loveliness. A cold contracted on the trip made him quite ill. The trip
+had proved very dangerous even with the aid of a pilot, and twice they
+gave themselves up for lost when they were becalmed and drifted in
+toward the shore. "The reefs were close in," wrote Stevenson, "with my
+eye! What a surf! The pilot thought we were gone and the captain had a
+boat cleared, when a lucky squall came to our rescue."
+
+After landing his condition became so much worse his wife grew desperate
+and determined to find a comfortable spot for him. After much trouble a
+Chinaman with a team was secured, who agreed to drive the entire family
+to Tautira, the largest village, sixteen miles away over a road crossed
+by no less than twenty-one streams. On this uncertain venture they
+started, with the head of the family in a state of collapse, knowing
+nothing of the village they were going to or the living it would afford
+them.
+
+None of them ever regretted the perseverance which led them on, however,
+for in all their wanderings in the South Seas before or after no place
+ever charmed them more, or were they received with greater hospitality
+than in Tautira.
+
+The day after their arrival, Moe, an island princess and an ex-queen,
+visited them. When she found Stevenson ill she insisted he and his
+family be moved to her own house where they could have more comforts.
+The house at the time was occupied by Ori, a subchief, a subject and
+relative of the princess. But he and his family gladly turned out to
+make room for the visitors and lived in a tiny house near by.
+
+"Ori is the very finest specimen of native we have seen yet," wrote Mrs.
+Stevenson. "He is several inches over six feet, of perfect though almost
+gigantic proportions."
+
+As soon as her husband was strong enough to be about again he and Ori
+became great friends. Finally, according to an island custom, Stevenson
+was adopted into Ori's clan and became his brother. This likewise meant
+exchanging names and Ori became Rui, the nearest possible approach to
+Louis since there is no L or S in the Tahitian language. Louis in turn
+became Teriitera (pronounced Ter_ee_terah), which was Ori's Christian
+name, Ori standing merely for his clan title.
+
+To show their gratitude for the hospitality shown them by Ori and the
+people of the village, Stevenson decided to give a public feast.
+
+The feast day was set for Wednesday, and the previous Sunday a chief
+issued the invitations from the Farehau, a house resembling an enormous
+bird-cage in the centre of the village, from which all the news was read
+aloud to the people once a week.
+
+A feast of such size necessitated much preparation.
+
+"The chief, who was our guide in the matter," wrote Mrs. Stevenson,
+"found four large fat hogs, which Louis bought, and four cases of ship's
+biscuit were sent over from the Casco, which is lying at Papeete for
+repairs.... Our hogs were killed in the morning, washed in the sea, and
+roasted whole in a pit with hot stones. When done they were laid on
+their stomachs in neat open coffins of green basket work, each hog with
+his case of biscuits beside him. Early in the morning the entire
+population began bathing, a bath being the preliminary to everything.
+At about three o'clock--four was the hour set--there was a general
+movement toward our premises, so that I had to hurry Louis into his
+clothes, all white even to his shoes. Lloyd was also in white, but
+barefoot.... The chief, who speaks French very well, stood beside Louis
+to interpret for him. By the time we had taken our respective places on
+the veranda in front of our door, an immense crowd had assembled. They
+came in five detachments.... Each set of people came bending under the
+weight of bamboo poles laden with fruits, figs, fowls, etc. All were
+dressed in their gayest and many had wreaths of leaves or flowers on
+their heads. The prettiest sight of all was the children, who came
+marching two and two abreast, the bamboo poles lying lengthwise across
+their shoulders.
+
+"When all the offerings had been piled in five great heaps upon the
+ground, Louis made his oration to the accompaniment of the squealing of
+pigs, the cackling of hens, and the roar of the surf.... A speech was
+made in return on behalf of the village.... Each speaker finished by
+coming forward with one of the smaller things in his hand, which he
+offered personally to Louis, and then shook hands with us all and
+retired. Among these smaller presents were many fish-hooks for large
+fishing, laboriously carved from mother-of-pearl shell. One man came
+with one egg in each hand saying 'carry these to Scotland with you, let
+them hatch into cocks, and their song shall remind you of Tautira.' The
+schoolmaster, with a leaf-basket of rose apples, made his speech in
+French."
+
+While overhauling the _Casco_ two or three days before they planned to
+leave Tautira, Captain Otis was shocked to find the whole upper half of
+the main masthead completely eaten out by dry-rot. This necessitated
+taking the schooner around to Papeete, on the other side of the island,
+for repairs. Under ordinary circumstances the setting of a new masthead
+need to have delayed them but a few days; in the South Seas, however,
+it was a different matter. Only after searching for days in Papeete was
+he able to find a man who knew anything of ship-carpentering, and when
+found he worked according to his own sweet will. So it was five weeks
+before the _Casco_ was ready to return for her passengers, who in the
+meantime were in a state of anxiety as to her whereabouts.
+
+During their enforced stay Ori treated the entire family like a brother
+indeed, doing everything in his power to make their visit pleasant.
+
+At last, on Christmas Day, they were ready to depart. The entire
+population of Tautira came to the beach to bid them farewell, and as the
+_Casco_ swung out of the harbor one of the French officials fired a
+salute of twenty-one guns with his army rifle and the schooner returned
+it with a heavy-tongued Winchester.
+
+Tautira had grown to seem like a real home to all of them. To leave it
+with very little hope of ever returning to see such good friends as
+Princess Moe and Ori was a real grief, while they in their turn were
+quite heart-broken. Stevenson's friendship had brought something into
+their lives they had never had before.
+
+Honolulu was the goal of the _Casco_ now, and all eagerly looked forward
+to the letters waiting for them there--the first word from home since
+leaving San Francisco.
+
+Bad weather attended the _Casco_ all the way. They were delayed by a
+succession of hurricanes and calms until the supply of food ran very low
+and they were reduced to a diet of "salt-horse" and ship-biscuit.
+
+The last forty-eight hours of their run was made in the very teeth of a
+furious gale when the captain took big risks by carrying full sail, with
+the hope of making port before their supply of food and water was
+entirely exhausted. In spite of the danger, Stevenson enjoyed this
+daring run hugely. Later, when he and Lloyd wrote "The Wrecker"
+together, this very episode figured in the story, Captain Otis under the
+name of Captain Nares performing a similar sail-carrying feat on the
+schooner _Norah Creina_.
+
+Mrs. Strong, Stevenson's stepdaughter, and her family were waiting in
+Honolulu and gave them a warm welcome. The travellers soon found
+themselves the centre of interest among Mrs. Strong's large circle of
+friends and it was with difficulty Stevenson found time to finish the
+last chapters of "The Master of Ballantrae," which he had been working
+on since leaving Saranac.
+
+Honolulu, with its street-cars, shops, electric lights, and mixture of
+native and foreign population, seemed strangely crowded and modern after
+the scenes they had recently left; too modern by far to suit Stevenson,
+who preferred the unconventional wild life of the islands they had come
+from.
+
+At the Royal Palace in Honolulu, Kalakaua, the last of the Hawaiian
+kings, still held court. He enjoyed R.L.S. and invited him often to the
+palace and told him the history and legends of many of the islands of
+the South Seas. It was from Kalakaua he first learned to know the
+troubled history of the Samoan Islands and of Apia, which was to be his
+future home.
+
+The Island of Molokai, the leper colony, lay not far off. While in
+Honolulu he spent several days there, in the place where Father Damien
+had lately done his splendid work.
+
+According to their original scheme they were to return home from
+Honolulu, but having come so far they were eager to see more. They had
+tasted the dangers and fascination of the life among the wild islands,
+each so different, and it had only whetted their appetites for what lay
+still beyond. The chances of coming so far again were slight; it seemed
+too good an opportunity to miss. So Stevenson wrote to the friends at
+home, whom he longed daily to see: "Yes--I own up--I am untrue to
+friendship and (what is less, but still considerable) to civilization. I
+am not coming home for another year.... But look here and judge me
+tenderly. I have had more fun and pleasure of my life these past months
+than ever before, and more health than any time in ten long years....
+And this precious deep is filled with islands which we may still visit,
+and though the sea is a dreadful place, I like to be there, and like
+squalls (when they are over) and to draw near to a new island I can not
+say how much I like....
+
+"Remember me as I was at home, and think of me sea-bathing and walking
+about, as jolly as a sand boy; you will own the temptation is strong;
+and as the scheme, bar fatal accidents, is bound to pay into the
+bargain, sooner or later, it seems it would be madness to come home now,
+with an imperfect book ... and perhaps fall sick again by autumn.
+
+"It is a singular thing that as I was packing up old papers ere I left
+Skerryvore, I came on the prophecies of a drunken Highland sibyl, when I
+was sixteen. She said I was to be very happy,--to visit America and _to
+be much upon the sea_.... I can not say why I like the sea ... my poor
+grandfather it is from him I inherit the taste I fancy, and he was
+around many islands in his day; but I, please God, shall beat him at
+that before the recall is sounded."
+
+So the _Casco_ was shipped back to San Francisco, Mrs. Stevenson,
+senior, returned to Scotland for a visit, and the trading schooner
+_Equator_ was chartered for a trip among the Marshall, Gilbert, and
+Samoan Islands.
+
+Just before leaving, the following letter came from Ori, which Stevenson
+says he would rather have received than written "Red Gauntlet" or the
+"Sixth AEneid."
+
+"I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I
+was filled with tears; my wife Rui Telime, also, and all my household.
+When you embarked I felt great sorrow. It is for this that I went upon
+the road, and you looked from that ship, and I looked at you on the ship
+with great grief until you had raised the anchor and hoisted the sail.
+When the ship started I ran along the beach to see you still; and when
+you were in the open sea I cried out to you 'Farewell Louis,' and when
+I was coming back to my house I seemed to hear your voice crying, 'Rui,
+farewell.' Afterwards I watched the ship as long as I could until the
+night fell; and when it was dark I said to myself: 'If I had wings I
+should fly to the ship to meet you,'... I wept then ... telling myself
+continually, 'Teriitera returns to his own country and leaves his dear
+Rui in grief.'... I will not forget you in my memory. Here is the
+thought: I desire to meet you again. It is my Teriitera makes the only
+riches I desire in this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see
+again. It must be that your body and my body shall eat together at one
+table, there is what would make my heart content. But now we are
+separated. May God be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with
+you, so that you may be well and we also, according to the words of
+Paul.
+
+"ORI A ORI, that is to say, RUI."
+
+"All told," said Stevenson, "if my books have enabled or helped me to
+make this voyage, to know Rui, and to have received such a letter, they
+have ... not been writ in vain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+VAILIMA
+
+  "We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that
+  unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which
+  we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the
+  bright skies that make our lives delightful, for the friends in all
+  parts of the earth, and our friendly helpers in this foreign isle....
+  Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our
+  friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our
+  innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us strength to encounter that
+  which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in
+  tribulation, temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and
+  down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another." R.L.S.
+
+                        --_Prayer used with the household at Vailima_.
+
+
+On the 7th of December, when the family landed at Upolu, the chief of
+the Samoas or Samoan Islands, they little dreamed it was to be their
+home for the next four years and the last the master of the house was
+ever to know.
+
+It had been frequently borne upon Stevenson, however, while cruising
+among the Marshall and Gilbert Islands during the past months, that a
+home in either England or Scotland again was a vain dream for him.
+
+"I do not ask for health," he said, "but I will go anywhere and live in
+any place where I can enjoy the existence of a human being." He seldom
+complained and it is rare to find even the brave sort of cry he made
+against fate to a friend at this time.
+
+"For fourteen years I have not had a day's real health. I have wakened
+sick and gone to bed weary, and I have done my work unflinchingly. I
+have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages,
+written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam
+for weakness, and for so long, it seems to me I have won my wager and
+recovered my glove. I am better now, have been, rightly speaking, since
+I first came to the Pacific; and still few are the days when I am not in
+some physical distress. And the battle goes on--ill or well, is a
+trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so
+willed that my battlefield shall be this dingy inglorious one of the
+bed and the physics bottle."
+
+Here in the tropics he might hope to live and work years longer--a
+return to a cold climate, he now knew, would be fatal.
+
+Why not turn traders? Often on starry nights, drifting among the low
+islands, he and Lloyd and the captain of the _Equator_ had lain out on
+deck and planned what a lark it would be to buy a schooner, cruise among
+the islands, and trade with the natives. They would write stories, too,
+about these strange island dwellers with their many weird superstitions
+and of the white men who drifted from all corners of the globe to make
+their home there.
+
+Already Captain Reid had told them many such tales which Stevenson wove
+into stories. The "Beach of Falesa" and the "Isle of Voices" are
+probably the two most famous, while "the strange story of the loss of
+the brigantine Wandering Minstrel and what men and ships do in that wild
+and beautiful world beyond the American continent" formed a plot for
+the story called "The Wrecker," which he and Lloyd Osbourne wrote
+together later on.
+
+Samoa was a place he was eager to visit. King Kalakaua at Honolulu had
+already told him much of its troubled history. The group of thirteen
+islands lay about four thousand two hundred miles southwest of San
+Francisco. At that time they were under the control of England, Germany,
+and the United States according to a treaty entered into in 1889. These
+countries appointed a chief justice, a president of the municipal
+council, three consuls, and three land commissioners. A native king was
+likewise recognized on each island.
+
+This triple control proved most unsatisfactory and for years past there
+had been constant friction among the officials and warlike outbreaks
+among the natives.
+
+These complications interested Stevenson. His first idea had been to
+stop there but a short time. He now found he wanted to remain in Samoa
+long enough to write its history.
+
+The Samoans are true Polynesians; a strong and handsome race whose
+reputation is high among all the people of the Pacific. The large
+majority have become Christians, but in spite of the influence of the
+missionaries and the foreign powers who control them, they retain many
+of their old customs and habits. They are naturally peace-loving in
+spite of their many wars. Fighting does not appeal to them for its own
+sake, and they enjoy a good family life, treating their women with great
+respect and lavishing affection upon their children.
+
+Stevenson wanted those at home to know these people better; his
+sympathy, which was ever with the weaker side, was instantly aroused in
+behalf of the natives, and he wanted to tell their side of the story.
+
+If they were to make a home anywhere in the South Seas there could be no
+better spot than Apia, the principal port and capital of these islands,
+as it had a good mail service, a most important feature to a writer.
+The monthly mail-steamers between San Francisco and Sydney, as well as
+other Australian mail-boats, stopped there.
+
+So he purchased four hundred acres on the hills three miles from Apia
+and preparations were immediately made for clearing the ground and
+building a house. Lloyd Osbourne left for England to bring back the
+household treasures from Skerryvore, to make a real home, and Stevenson
+and his wife lived gypsy fashion meanwhile in a four-room wooden house.
+
+The new home was named Vailima, which is Samoan for "Five Waters," there
+being five streams running through the property.
+
+The house was built of wood, painted dark green with a red roof. When
+finished its chief feature was the great hall within, sixty feet long,
+lined and ceiled with California redwood. Here among the home
+treasures--his own portrait, war dresses, corselets, fans, and mats
+presented to him by island kings--the marble bust of grandfather
+Stevenson smiled down with approval on many a motley gathering. Louis
+often wondered if they reminded the old gentleman of some of the strange
+people he had entertained years ago in Baxter Place.
+
+All about was dense, tropical undergrowth, only paths led to the house,
+and these must continually be cut out. All carrying was done by two big
+New Zealand pack-horses.
+
+A large garden was planted--Mrs. Stevenson's special hobby. Cocoanuts,
+oranges, guavas, and mangoes already grew on the estate. The ground was
+very fertile, and kava, the root of which is used for the Samoan
+national drink, pineapples, sweet potatoes, and eggplants were soon
+flourishing among other things. Limes were so plentiful that they formed
+the hedge about the place; citrons were so common that they rotted on
+the trees.
+
+[Illustration: The house at Vailima]
+
+All this ground-breaking, house-building, and gardening were new to
+Stevenson, and he revelled in them to the neglect of his writing.
+
+"This is a hard and interesting and beautiful life we lead now," he
+wrote to Sidney Colvin. "Our place is in a deep cleft of Vaea Mountain;
+some six hundred feet above the sea, embowered in forest, which is our
+strangling enemy, and which we combat with axes and dollars. I am crazy
+over outdoor work, and had at last to confine myself to the house, or
+literature must have gone by the board. _Nothing_ is so interesting as
+weeding, clearing, and pathmaking; the oversight of laborers becomes a
+disease; it is quite an effort not to drop into the farmer; and it does
+make you feel so well. To come down covered with mud and drenched with
+sweat and rain after some hours in the bush, change, rub down, and take
+a chair in the verandah, is to taste a quiet conscience."
+
+Before his arrival in Apia, Stevenson's tale of "The Bottle Imp" had
+been translated into Samoan by the missionaries. When the natives
+discovered he was its author they immediately named him Tusitala, The
+Teller-of-Tales. He still owned the bottle, they said; it was that gave
+him the wealth to cruise about in a great boat and build a fine house.
+The family often wondered why native visitors were curious to see the
+inside of the great safe in the hall at Vailima until they found that it
+was the belief among the islanders that the safe was the bottle's
+hiding-place.
+
+Mrs. Stevenson, senior, returned with Lloyd from England, and later Mrs.
+Strong and her small son, Austin, came from Honolulu to make the family
+complete.
+
+The servants were all natives, "boys" as they called themselves. There
+were usually about half a dozen about the house, with a boy for the
+garden and to look after the cows and pigs, besides a band of outside
+laborers, varying from half a dozen to thirty, under Lloyd's direction.
+
+Sosimo was Stevenson's particular boy. He waited upon him hand and foot,
+looked after his clothes and his pony "Jack," and was devoted in every
+way. His loyalty to his master lasted to the end of his own life.
+
+The servants were governed on something very like the clan system. A
+Vailima tartan was adopted for special occasions and Stevenson
+encouraged them to think of the household as a family, to take interest
+and pride in all its doings.
+
+On Sunday evenings the entire household was assembled. A chapter of the
+Samoan Bible was read and Samoan hymns sung. Then a prayer in English
+written by Stevenson was read, concluding with the Lord's Prayer in
+Samoan.
+
+If the master had cause to be displeased with any one of them, they were
+all summoned and reprimanded or fined.
+
+His stories delighted them. They were never tired of looking at the
+picture of Skerryvore Light and hearing about the rugged coasts of
+Tusitala's native island and of his father and grandfather who built
+lighthouses. The latter impressed them greatly, since building of any
+kind in Samoa is considered a fine art. The deeds of General Gordon, the
+Indian Mutiny, and Lucknow were likewise favorite tales when Tusitala
+showed them a treasure he prized highly: a message written by General
+Gordon from Khartoum. It was in Arabic on a small piece of
+cigarette-paper which might be easily swallowed should the messenger be
+captured. Stevenson always believed it to be the last message sent
+before the great general's death.
+
+They came to him for everything and he was ever ready with help and
+advice. They were quick to appreciate his justice and kindliness, and to
+a man were devoted to him. "Once Tusitala's friend, always Tusitala's
+friend," they said.
+
+With his customary energy he threw himself heart and soul for a time
+into the political troubles of the island, making himself the champion
+of the natives' cause. He wrote a series of letters to the papers at
+home stating his idea of the injustice shown the Samoans under their
+present government. It was a most delicate situation, and at times led
+to very strained relations between himself and the officials in Apia.
+
+Those at home wondered why Stevenson tampered with island politics at
+all. Why did he not simply leave them to the powers in charge?
+
+His answer was, he had made Samoa his home, the Samoans were his people,
+and he could not fail to resent any injustice shown them.
+
+Lloyd Osbourne says: "He was consulted on every imaginable subject....
+Government chiefs and rebels consulted him with regard to policy;
+political letters were brought to him to read and criticise.... Parties
+would come to hear the latest news of the proposed disarming of the
+country, or to arrange a private audience with one of the officials; and
+poor war-worn chieftains, whose only anxiety was to join the winning
+side and who wished to consult with Tusitala as to which that might be.
+Mr. Stevenson would sigh sometimes as he saw these stately folks
+crossing the lawn in single file, their attendants following behind with
+presents and baskets, but he never failed to meet or hear them."
+
+He aided one party of chieftains in prison, and to show their gratitude
+on regaining their freedom they cleared and dug a splendid road leading
+to his house. All the labor and expense they bore themselves, which
+amounted to no small matter. Ala Loto Alofa, they called it, the Road of
+the Loving Hearts.
+
+Warlike outbreaks were not infrequent near Vailima. The woods were often
+full of scouting parties and the roll of drums could be heard. One day
+as Stevenson and Mrs. Strong were writing together they were interrupted
+by a war party crossing the lawn. Mrs. Strong asked: "Louis, have we a
+pistol or gun in the house that will shoot?" and he answered cheerfully
+without stopping his work: "No, but we have friends on both sides."
+
+With all their political differences he and the officials retained
+friendly feeling. He paid calls on them at Apia and attended various
+town gatherings, while they were often entertained at Vailima.
+
+Always hospitable, it was a delight to him now to keep open house. Not
+only the chief justice, the consuls, the doctor, the missionaries, and
+the traders were in the habit of dropping in to Vailima, but from every
+ship that docked at Apia came some visitor who was anxious to meet
+Stevenson and his family; from the war-ships came the officers and
+sailors.
+
+The bluejackets were always particularly welcome. Mrs. Strong tells of a
+party who came from H.M.S. _Wallaroo_ on one Thanksgiving Day, when "the
+kitchen department was in great excitement over that foreign bird the
+turkey" and all was confusion. "But Louis kept his sailors on all the
+afternoon. He took them over the house and showed them ... the
+curiosities from the islands, the big picture of Skerryvore
+lighthouse,... the treasured bit of Gordon's handwriting from Khartoum,
+in Arabic letters on a cigarette paper,... and the library, where the
+Scotchmen gathered about an old edition of Burns, with a portrait. Louis
+gave a volume of Underwoods (Stevenson's poems) with an inscription to
+Grant, the one who hailed from Edinburgh, and the man carried it
+carefully wrapped in his handkerchief. They went away waving their hats
+and keeping step."
+
+A croquet-ground and tennis-court were laid out, and Vailima was the
+scene of balls, dinners, and parties of all kinds. No birthday or
+holiday, English, American, or Samoan, was allowed to pass unnoticed,
+and the natives were included in these festivities whenever possible.
+
+The first Christmas at Vailima they had a party for the children who had
+never before seen a Christmas tree.
+
+Tusitala's birthday was always a special event to his island friends.
+The feast was served in native style; all seated about on the floor.
+Rather large gatherings they must have been, to judge from Mrs. Strong's
+account. "We had sixteen pigs roasted whole underground, three enormous
+fish (small whales, Lloyd called them), four hundred pounds of beef,
+ditto of pork, 200 heads of taro, great bunches of bananas, native
+delicacies done up in bundles of _ti_ leaves, 800 pineapples, many
+weighing fifteen pounds, all from Lloyd's patch. Among the presents for
+Tusitala, besides flowers and wreaths, were fans, native baskets ... and
+cocoanut cups beautifully polished."
+
+[Illustration: A feast of chiefs]
+
+On these occasions the hosts were often entertained with dances and
+songs. All the Samoans are great singers. They composed songs about
+everything and everybody, so that one could judge the standing a person
+held by the songs that were sung about him.
+
+Those sung at Vailima parties were usually written by one of the house
+"boys" and "they were danced and acted with great spirit.... Sometimes
+every member of the family would be represented ... but the central
+figure, the heart of the song was always Tusitala."
+
+It is a marvel with the many demands made upon him, his varied
+interests, and frequent visits to neighboring islands, Stevenson still
+found time to write stories, poems, prayers, notes of the South Sea
+Islands, Samoan history, and many, many letters. "It is a life that
+suits me but absorbs me like an ocean," he said. Through it all his
+health continued fairly good. He was able to take long tramps and rides
+that would have been physically impossible two years before.
+
+Mrs. Strong acted as his secretary and the majority of his writing now
+was done by dictation. "He generally makes notes early in the morning,"
+she wrote, "which he elaborates as he reads them aloud ... he never
+falters for a word, but gives me the sentence with capital letters and
+all the stops as clearly and steadily as though he were reading from an
+unseen book."
+
+The two South Sea books occupied much of his time, but it was of his own
+land and people so far away that he had so little hope of ever seeing
+again, he loved best to write.
+
+"It is a singular thing," he wrote to James Barrie, "that I should live
+here in the South Seas, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit
+the cold old huddle of grey hills from which we came."
+
+He finished and sent away further adventures of David Balfour and Alan
+Breck under the title of "David Balfour." "St. Ives" followed with its
+scenes laid around Edinburgh Castle, Swanston Cottage, and the Pentland
+Hills. In his last book, "Weir of Hermiston," the one he left
+unfinished, broken off in the midst of a word, he roamed the streets of
+Auld Reekie again with a hero very like what he had once been himself,
+who was likewise an enthusiastic member of the "Spec."
+
+Something which pleased him greatly at this time was the news from his
+friend Charles Baxter in Edinburgh that a complete edition of his works
+was to be published in the best possible form with a limited number of
+copies, to be called the "Edinburgh Edition."
+
+"I suppose it was your idea to give it that name," Stevenson wrote,
+thanking him. "No other would have affected me in the same manner....
+Could a more presumptuous idea have occurred to us in those days when we
+used to search our pockets for coppers, too often in vain, and combine
+forces to produce the threepence necessary for two glasses of beer, than
+that I should be strong and well at the age of forty three in the island
+of Upolu, and that you should be at home bringing out the 'Edinburgh
+Edition'?"
+
+In spite of the many interests in his present life, his love for the
+people and the country, the yearning for the friends far away grew
+daily.
+
+How he longed to have them see Vailima with all its beauties! To talk
+over old times again. Such visits were continually planned, but they
+were never realized.
+
+He seldom complained and those who were with him every day rarely found
+him low in spirits. It was into the letters to his old intimates that
+these longings crept when it swept over him that, though a voluntary
+exile in a pleasant place, he was an exile none the less, with the fate
+of him who wrote:
+
+ "There's a track across the deep,
+  And a path across the sea,
+  But for me there's nae return
+  To my ain countree."
+
+"When the smell of the good wet earth" came to him it came "with a kind
+of Highland tone." A tropic shower found him in a "frame of mind and
+body that belonged to Scotland." And when he turned to write the
+chronicle of his grandfather's life and work, the beautiful words in
+which he described the old gentleman's farewell to "Sumbraugh and the
+wild crags of Skye" meant likewise his own farewell to those shores. No
+more was he to "see the topaz and ruby interchange on the summit of Bell
+Rock," no more to see "the castle on its hills," or the venerable city
+which he always thought of as his home.
+
+"Like Leyden," he wrote, "I have gone into a far land to die, not stayed
+like Burns to mingle in the end with Scottish soil."
+
+It was drawing near the close of their fourth year in Apia. On November
+13 his birthday had been celebrated with the usual festivities, and on
+Thanksgiving Day he had given a dinner to his American friends--and then
+the end of all his wanderings and working came suddenly.
+
+"He wrote hard all that morning of the last day," says Lloyd Osbourne,
+"on his half-finished book Hermiston.... In the afternoon the mail fell
+to be answered; not business correspondence--but replies to the long,
+kindly letters of distant friends, received but two days since, and
+still bright in memory.
+
+"At sunset he came downstairs.... He was helping his wife on the
+verandah, and gaily talking, when suddenly he put both hands to his
+head, and cried out, 'What's that?' Then he asked quickly, 'Do I look
+strange?' Even as he did so he fell on his knees beside her. He was
+helped into the great hall, between his wife and body-servant, Sosimo,
+losing consciousness instantly, as he lay back in the arm-chair that had
+once been his grandfather's. Little time was lost in bringing the
+doctors, Anderson of the man-of-war, and his friend Dr. Funk. They
+looked at him and shook their heads ... he had passed the bounds of
+human skill....
+
+"The dozen and more Samoans that formed part of the clan of which he was
+chief, sat in a wide semicircle on the floor, their reverent, troubled,
+sorrow-stricken faces all fixed upon their dying master. Some knelt on
+one knee to be instantly ready for any command that might be laid upon
+them....
+
+"He died at ten minutes past eight on Monday evening the 3rd of
+December, in the forty-fifth year of his age.
+
+"The great Union Jack that flew over the house was hauled down and laid
+over the body, fit shroud for a loyal Scotsman. He lay in the hall which
+was ever his pride, where he had passed the gayest and most delightful
+hours of his life.... In it were the treasures of his far off Scottish
+home.... The Samoans passed in procession beside his bed, kneeling and
+kissing his hand, each in turn, before taking their places for the long
+night watch beside him. No entreaty could induce them to retire, to
+rest themselves for the painful arduous duties of the morrow. It would
+show little love for Tusitala, they said, if they did not spend their
+last night beside him. Mournful and silent, they sat in deep dejection,
+poor, simple, loyal folks, fulfilling the duty that they owed their
+chief.
+
+"A messenger was dispatched to a few chiefs connected with the family,
+to announce the tidings and bid them assemble their men on the morrow
+for the work there was to do....
+
+"The morning of the 4th of December broke cool and sunny.... A meeting
+of chiefs was held to apportion the work and divide the men into
+parties. Forty were sent with knives and axes to cut a path up the steep
+face of the mountain, and the writer himself led another party to the
+summit--men chosen from the immediate family--to dig the grave on the
+spot where it was Robert Louis Stevenson's wish that he should lie....
+Nothing more picturesque can be imagined than the ledge that forms the
+summit to Vaea, a place no wider than a room, and flat as a table. On
+either side the land descends precipitously; in front lies the vast
+ocean and surf-swept reefs; to the right and left green mountains
+rise....
+
+"All the morning Samoans were arriving with flowers, few of these were
+white, for they have not learned our foreign custom, and the room glowed
+with the many colors. There were no strangers on that day, no
+acquaintances; those only were called who would deeply feel the loss. At
+one o'clock a body of powerful Samoans bore away the coffin, hid beneath
+a tattered red ensign that had flown above his vessel in many a remote
+corner of the South Seas. A path so steep and rugged taxed their
+strength to the utmost, for not only was the journey difficult in
+itself, but extreme care was requisite to carry the coffin shoulder
+high....
+
+"No stranger hand touched him.... Those who loved him carried him to his
+last home; even the coffin was the work of an old friend. The grave was
+dug by his own men."
+
+Tusitala had left them, and his friends in the South Seas had lost a
+faithful friend and companion, a wise and just master.
+
+His family and friends the world over had lost not only these but far
+more. His life had been a chivalrous one with all the best that chivalry
+stands for, "loyalty, honesty, generosity, courage, courtesy, and
+self-devotion; to impute no unworthy motives and to bear no grudges; to
+bear misfortune with cheerfulness and without a murmur; to strike hard
+for the right and to take no mean advantage; to be gentle to women and
+kind to all that are weak; to be rigorous with oneself and very lenient
+to others--these ... were the traits that distinguished Stevenson."
+
+"They do not make life easy as he frequently found."
+
+His resting-place on the crest of Vaea Mountain is covered by a tomb of
+gray stone. On one side is inscribed in English the verses he had
+written for his own requiem:
+
+   A            ROBERT LOUIS     [Symbol: Omega]
+  1850           STEVENSON            1894
+
+    "Under the wide and starry sky,
+     Dig the grave and let me lie,
+     Glad did I live and gladly die,
+     And I laid me down with a will.
+
+    "This be the verse you grave for me:
+     Here he lies where he longed to be;
+     Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
+     And the hunter home from the hill."
+
+[Illustration: The tomb of Stevenson on Vaea Mountain]
+
+On the other side, written in Samoan and surrounded by carvings of
+thistles, his native flowers, and the hibiscus flowers, emblem of the
+South, are the words from the Bible:
+
+  "Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge;
+  thy people shall be my people; and thy God my God; where thou diest
+  will I die, and there will I be buried."
+
+The Samoan chiefs have forbidden the use of firearms upon Vaea hillside,
+"that the birds may live there undisturbed, and raise above his grave
+the songs he loved so well."
+
+ "Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales,
+  Giver of counsels and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight,
+  Looks o'er the labours of men in the plain and the hills; and the sails
+  Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night."
+
+                                                           --ANDREW LANG.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+SOME WORKS IN RELATION TO STEVENSON'S LIFE, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF AND
+OTHERS
+
+
+GENERAL BIOGRAPHY
+
+Balfour, Graham: "Life of Robert Louis Stevenson." Two vols.
+
+Colvin, Sidney, ed.: "Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson," with
+biographical notes and an introduction by the editor.
+
+Simpson, E. Blantyre: "The Robert Louis Stevenson Originals."
+
+Strong, Mrs. Isobel: "Robert Louis Stevenson."
+
+Watts, Lauchlan Maclean: "Hills of Home"--with Pentland Essays by R.L.
+Stevenson.
+
+Watts: "Robert Louis Stevenson."
+
+
+ANCESTORS
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "A Family of Engineers."
+
+----"Thomas Stevenson"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+Stevenson: "Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh"--In "Essays of Travel and in
+the Art of Writing."
+
+Talbot, F.A.: "Lightships and Lighthouses." Chapters relating to the
+building of Bell Rock and Skerryvore.
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "To My Father." "Skerryvore."
+
+
+CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "The Manse"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Child's Play"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"The Lantern Bearers"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+----"Child's Garden of Verses."
+
+
+THE STUDENT AND WANDERER
+
+Simpson, E. Blantyre: "Robert Louis Stevenson's Edinburgh Days."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "An Apology for Idlers"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"Crabbed Age and Youth"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"Walking Tours"--in "Virginibus Puerisque."
+
+----"Some College Memories"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Old Mortality"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"A College Magazine"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Pastoral"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"An Old Scotch Gardener"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Books Which Have Influenced Me"--in "Later Essays."
+
+----"Memories of an Islet"--in "Memories and Portraits."
+
+----"Random Memories"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+----"Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin."
+
+----"An Inland Voyage."
+
+----"Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes."
+
+Low, Will H.: "A Chronicle of Friendships." Chapters dealing with
+Stevenson's days in the artists' colonies of Fontainebleau and Paris.
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "The Vagabond."
+                    "The Song of the Road."
+                    "Bright is the Ring of Words."
+                    "Youth and Love," II.
+                    "The Canoe Speaks."
+                    "A Camp."
+                    "The Country of the Carnisards."
+                    "Our Lady of the Snows."
+                    "To a Gardener."
+                    "To Will H. Low."
+                    "To Andrew Lang."
+
+
+FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA
+
+Shipman, L.E.: "First Landing in New York"--In _Book Buyer_, vol. 13, p.
+13.
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "The Amateur Emigrant."
+
+----"Across the Plains."
+
+----"The Old Pacific Capital (Monterey)"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+----"The Silverado Squatters."
+
+
+SCOTLAND AGAIN
+
+Gosse, Edmund: "Personal Memories of Stevenson"--in _Century_, vol. 28,
+p. 447.
+
+Osbourne, Lloyd: "Stevenson at Play"--in _Scribner's Magazine_, vol. 24,
+p. 709.
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to Biographical edition of "Treasure
+Island."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "My First Book, 'Treasure Island'"--in _McClure's
+Magazine_, vol. 3, p. 283.
+
+----"Chapter on Dreams"--in "Across the Plains."
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: Preface to the Biographical edition of "Dr. Jekyll
+and Mr. Hyde."
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "Skerryvore, the Parallel."
+                    "Bells upon the City are Ringing in the Night."
+                    "I Know Not How It Is With You."
+                    "Ticonderoga--a Legend of the West Highlands."
+                    "Heather Ale--a Galloway Legend."
+
+
+SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA
+
+Low, Will H.: "Chronicle of Friendships." Chapters relating to
+Stevenson's second visit to New York and his meeting with General
+Sherman and the sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
+
+Saint-Gaudens, Augustus: "Reminiscences of Saint-Gaudens." Chapters
+dealing with Mr. Saint-Gaudens's recollections of Stevenson at the time
+he made his portrait.
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters--From Saranac to the Marquesas and
+Beyond."
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "In the States."
+                    "Winter."
+
+
+IN THE SOUTH SEAS
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters--From Saranac to the Marquesas and
+Beyond."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "In the South Seas."
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. R.L.: "Cruise of the _Janet Nichol_ Among the South Sea
+Islands--a Diary."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "Beach of Falesa," "Isle of Voices," "Bottle Imp"--in
+"Island Nights' Entertainments."
+
+----"The Wrecker."
+
+----"The Ebb Tide."
+
+---- Letters Dealing with Pacific Voyages and Life in Samoa--in his
+collected letters edited by Sidney Colvin.
+
+Stevenson, Mrs. Margaret: "Letters from Samoa."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "A Foot-Note to History. Eight Years of Trouble in
+Samoa."
+
+Strong, Mrs. Isobel, and Osbourne, Lloyd: "Memories of Vailima."
+
+Stevenson, R.L.: "Prayers Written at Vailima."
+
+Poems by Stevenson: "The Song of Rahero--a Legend of Tahiti."
+                    "The Feast of Famine--Marquesan Manners."
+                    "To an Island Princess."
+                    "To Kalakaua."
+                    "To Princess Kaiulani."
+                    "The House of Tembinoka."
+                    "The Woodman."
+                    "Tropic Rain."
+                    "To My Wife."
+                    "To My Wife" (a fragment).
+
+Poems of Farewell: "The Morning Drum-Call on My Eager Ear."
+                   "In the Highlands, in the Country Places."
+                   "To My Old Familiars."
+                   "The Tropics Vanish."
+                   "To S.C."
+                   "To S.R. Crockett."
+                   "Evensong."
+                   "We Uncommiserate Pass into the Night."
+                   "I Have Trod the Upward and Downward Slope."
+                   "An End of Travel."
+                   "The Celestial Surgeon."
+                   "Home No More Home to Me, Whither Must I Wander?"
+                   "Farewell, Fair Day and Fading Light."
+                   "Requiem."
+
+Lang, Andrew: "Tusitala"--in "Later Collected Verses."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for
+Boys and Girls, by Jacqueline M. Overton
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