frank and clear, piercing, but at the same time steady, and fall on
you with a gentle radiance and animation as he speaks. Romance, if

with an indescribable SOUPCON of whimsicality, is marked upon him;
sometimes he has the look as of the Ancient Mariner, and could fix

you with his glittering e'e, and he would, as he points his
sentences with a movement of his thin white forefinger, when this

is not monopolised with the almost incessant cigarette. There is a
faint suggestion of a hair-brained sentimental trace on his

countenance, but controlled, after all, by good Scotch sense and
shrewdness. In conversation he is very animated, and likes to ask

questions. A favourite and characteristic attitude with him was to
put his foot on a chair or stool and rest his elbow on his knee,

with his chin on his hand; or to sit, or rather to half sit, half
lean, on the corner of a table or desk, one of his legs swinging

freely, and when anything that tickled him was said he would laugh
in the heartiest manner, even at the risk of bringing on his cough,

which at that time was troublesome. Often when he got animated he
rose and walked about as he spoke, as if movement aided thought and

expression. Though he loved Edinburgh, which was full of
associations for him, he had no good word for its east winds, which

to him were as death. Yet he passed one winter as a "Silverado
squatter," the story of which he has inimitably told in the volume

titled THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS; and he afterwards spent several
winters at Davos Platz, where, as he said to me, he not only

breathed good air, but learned to know with closest intimacy John
Addington Symonds, who "though his books were good, was far finer

and more interesting than any of his books." He needed a good deal
of nursery attentions, but his invalidism was never obtrusively

brought before one in any sympathy-seeking way by himself; on the
contrary, a very manly, self-sustaining spirit was evident; and the

amount of work which he managed to turn out even when at his worst
was truly surprising.

His wife, an American lady, is highly cultured, and is herself an
author. In her speech there is just the slightest suggestion of

the American accent, which only made it the more pleasing to my
ear. She is heart and soul devoted to her husband, proud of his

achievements, and her delight is the consciousness of substantially
aiding him in his enterprises.

They then had with them a boy of eleven or twelve, Samuel Lloyd
Osbourne, to be much referred to later (a son of Mrs Stevenson by a

former marriage), whose delight was to draw the oddest, but perhaps
half intentional or unintentional caricatures, funny, in some

cases, beyond expression. His room was designated the picture-
gallery, and on entering I could scarcerefrain from bursting into

laughter, even at the general effect, and, noticing this, and that
I was putting some restraint on myself out of respect for the

host's feelings, Stevenson said to me with a sly wink and a gentle
dig in the ribs, "It's laugh and be thankful here." On Lloyd's

account simple engraving materials, types, and a small printing-
press had been procured; and it was Stevenson's delight to make

funny poems, stories, and morals for the engravings executed, and
all would be duly printed together. Stevenson's thorough enjoyment

of the picture-gallery, and his goodness to Lloyd, becoming himself
a very boy for the nonce, were delightful to witness and in degree

to share. Wherever they were - at Braemar, in Edinburgh, at Davos
Platz, or even at Silverado - the engraving and printing went on.

The mention of the picture-gallery suggests that it was out of his
interest in the colour-drawing and the picture-gallery that his

first published story, TREASURE ISLAND, grew, as we shall see.
I have some copies of the rude printing-press productions,

inexpressibly quaint, grotesque, a kind of literary horse-play, yet
with a certain squint-eyed, sprawling genius in it, and innocent

childish Rabelaisian mirth of a sort. At all events I cannot look
at the slight memorials of that time, which I still possess,

without laughing afresh till my eyes are dewy. Stevenson, as I
understood, began TREASURE ISLAND more to entertain Lloyd Osbourne

than anything else; the chapters being regularly read to the family
circle as they were written, and with scarcely a purpose beyond.

The lad became Stevenson's trusted companion and collaborator -
clearly with a touch of genius.

I have before me as I write some of these funny momentoes of that
time, carefully kept, often looked at. One of them is, "THE BLACK

CANYON; OR, WILD ADVENTURES IN THE FAR WEST: a Tale of Instruction
and Amusement for the Young, by Samuel L. Osbourne, printed by the

author; Davos Platz," with the most remarkable cuts. It would not
do some of the sensationalists anything but good to read it even at

this day, since many points in their art are absurdly caricatured.
Another is "MORAL EMBLEMS; A COLLECTION OF CUTS AND VERSES, by R.

L. Stevenson, author of the BLUE SCALPER, etc., etc. Printers, S.
L. Osbourne and Company, Davos Platz." Here are the lines to a

rare piece of grotesque, titled A PEAK IN DARIEN -
'Broad-gazing on untrodden lands,

See where adventurous Cortez stands,
While in the heavens above his head,

The eagle seeks its daily bread.
How aptly fact to fact replies,

Heroes and eagles, hills and skies.
Ye, who contemn the fatted slave,

Look on this emblem and be brave."
Another, THE ELEPHANT, has these lines -

"See in the print how, moved by whim,
Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim,

Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat,
To noose that individual's hat;

The Sacred Ibis in the distance,
Joys to observe his bold resistance."

R. L. Stevenson wrote from Davos Platz, in sending me THE BLACK
CANYON:

"Sam sends as a present a work of his own. I hope you feel
flattered, for THIS IS SIMPLY THE FIRST TIME HE HAS EVER GIVEN ONE

AWAY. I have to buy my own works, I can tell you."
Later he said, in sending a second:

"I own I have delayed this letter till I could forward the
enclosed. Remembering the night at Braemar, when we visited the

picture-gallery, I hope it may amuse you: you see we do some
publishing hereaway."

Delightfully suggestive and highly enjoyable, too, were the
meetings in the little drawing-room after dinner, when the

contrasted traits of father and son came into full play - when R.
L. Stevenson would sometimes draw out a new view by bold, half-

paradoxical assertion, or compel advance on the point from a new
quarter by a searching question couched in the simplest language,

or reveal his own latest conviction finally, by a few sentences as
nicely rounded off as though they had been written, while he rose

and gently moved about, as his habit was, in the course of those
more extended remarks. Then a chapter or two of THE SEA-COOK would

be read, with due pronouncement on the main points by one or other
of the family audience.

The reading of the book is one thing. It was quite another thing
to hear Stevenson as he stood reading it aloud, with his hand

stretched out holding the manuscript, and his body gently swaying
as a kind of rhythmical commentary on the story. His fine voice,

clear and keen it some of its tones, had a wonderful power of
inflection and variation, and 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. Yes, to read it in

print was good, but better yet to hear Stevenson read it.
CHAPTER II - TREASURE ISLAND AND SOME REMINISCENCES

WHEN I left Braemar, I carried with me a considerableportion of
the MS. of TREASURE ISLAND, with an outline of the rest of the

story. It originally bore the odd title of THE SEA-COOK, and, as I
have told before, I showed it to Mr Henderson, the proprietor of