These trivial tales illustrate a period in his life and adventures which I only know by rumour.  Our own acquaintance was, to a great degree, literary and bookish.  Perhaps it began “with a slight aversion,” but it seemed, like madeira, to be ripened and improved by his long sea voyage; and the news of his death taught me, at least, the true nature of the affection which he was destined to win.  Indeed, our acquaintance was like the friendship of a wild singing bird and of a punctual, domesticated barn-door fowl, laying its daily “article” for the breakfast-table of the citizens.  He often wrote to me from Samoa, sometimes with news of native manners and folklore.  He sent me a devil-box, the “luck” of some strange island, which he bought at a great price.  After parting with its “luck,” or fetish (a shell in a curious wooden box), the island was unfortunate, and was ravaged by measles.

I occasionally sent out books needed for Mr. Stevenson’s studies, of which more will be said.  But I must make it plain that, in the body, we met but rarely.  His really intimate friends were Mr. Colvin and Mr. Baxter (who managed the practical side of his literary business between them); Mr. Henley (in partnership with whom he wrote several plays); his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson; and, among other literati, Mr. Gosse, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Saintsbury, Mr Walter Pollock, knew him well.  The best portrait of Mr. Stevenson that I know is by Sir.  W. B. Richmond, R.A., and is in that gentleman’s collection of contemporaries, with the effigies of Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. William Morris, Mr. Browning, and others.  It is unfinished, owing to an illness which stopped the sittings, and does not show the subject at his best, physically speaking.  There is also a brilliant, slight sketch, almost a caricature, by Mr. Sargent.  It represents Mr. Stevenson walking about the room in conversation.

The people I have named, or some of them, knew Mr. Stevenson more intimately than I can boast of doing.  Unlike each other, opposites in a dozen ways, we always were united by the love of letters, and of Scotland, our dear country.  He was a patriot, yet he spoke his mind quite freely about Burns, about that apparent want of heart in the poet’s amours, which our countrymen do not care to hear mentioned.  Well, perhaps, for some reasons, it had to be mentioned once, and so no more of it.

Mr. Stevenson possessed, more than any man I ever met, the power of making other men fall in love with him.  I mean that he excited a passionate admiration and affection, so much so that I verily believe some men were jealous of other men’s place in his liking.  I once met a stranger who, having become acquainted with him, spoke of him with a touching fondness and pride, his fancy reposing, as it seemed, in a fond contemplation of so much genius and charm.  What was so taking in him? and how is one to analyse that dazzling surface of pleasantry, that changeful shining humour, wit, wisdom, recklessness; beneath which beat the most kind and tolerant of hearts?