People were fond of him, and people were proud of him:  his achievements, as it were, sensibly raised their pleasure in the world, and, to them, became parts of themselves.  They warmed their hands at that centre of light and heat.  It is not every success which has these beneficent results.  We see the successful sneered at, decried, insulted, even when success is deserved.  Very little of all this, hardly aught of all this, I think, came in Mr. Stevenson’s way.  After the beginning (when the praises of his earliest admirers were irritating to dull scribes) he found the critics fairly kind, I believe, and often enthusiastic.  He was so much his own severest critic that he probably paid little heed to professional reviewers.  In addition to his “Rathillet,” and other MSS. which he destroyed, he once, in the Highlands, long ago, lost a portmanteau with a batch of his writings.  Alas, that he should have lost or burned anything!  “King’s chaff,” says our country proverb, “is better than other folk’s corn.”

I have remembered very little, or very little that I can write, and about our last meeting, when he was so near death, in appearance, and so full of courage—­how can I speak?  His courage was a strong rock, not to be taken or subdued.  When unable to utter a single word, his pencilled remarks to his attendants were pithy and extremely characteristic.  This courage and spiritual vitality made one hope that he would, if he desired it, live as long as Voltaire, that reed among oaks.  There were of course, in so rare a combination of characteristics, some which were not equally to the liking of all.  He was highly original in costume, but, as his photographs are familiar, the point does not need elucidation.  Life was a drama to him, and he delighted, like his own British admirals, to do things with a certain air.  He observed himself, I used to think, as he observed others, and “saw himself” in every part he played.  There was nothing of the cabotin in this self-consciousness; it was the unextinguished childish passion for “playing at things” which remained with him.  I have a theory that all children possess genius, and that it dies out in the generality of mortals, abiding only with people whose genius the world is forced to recognise.  Mr. Stevenson illustrates, and perhaps partly suggested, this private philosophy of mine.

I have said very little; I have no skill in reminiscences, no art to bring the living aspect of the man before those who never knew him.  I faintly seem to see the eager face, the light nervous figure, the fingers busy with rolling cigarettes; Mr. Stevenson talking, listening, often rising from his seat, standing, walking to and fro, always full of vivid intelligence, wearing a mysterious smile.  I remember one pleasant dark afternoon, when he told me many tales of strange adventures, narratives which he had heard about a murderous lonely inn, somewhere in the States.  He was as good