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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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