Part 3 (2/2)

Many of the students of that day have taken a good place in the world; sos of time behind theraphic pages Several of the personality, but very few of the the world-wide fame, not only to himself, but to his University and to the city of his birth

On the 2nd March 1869 he was proposed by George Melville, Esq, Advocate, as a member of the Speculative Society, and we know from _Memories and Portraits_ how much he appreciated his membershi+p of that Society, which has in its day included in the roll, on which his name stood No 992, most of the men whose names are honoured in Scotland's capital, and many of whom the fame and the ht shold of University authority, he playfully professes to have been his chief pleasure in the thing; but other erness in debate, s, tell another story, and it was co of interest in hand if Stevenson took a part in it

When he forsook the profession of engineering, Mr Stevenson attended the Law classes at the University, with the intention of being called to the Bar, but it is not on record that he was a , and he still found more satisfaction in his truant raraveyards than he did in the legitimate study of his profession

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cairketton is the form used in the Ordnance Survey

CHAPTER IV

AS I FIRST KNEW HIM

'Blessed are his parents in a son, so graced in face and figure And of mind so wise'

--LORD DERBY'S TRANSLATION OF _The Iliad_

That was one of the quotations by which in those days ont to describe Mr Stevenson Strictly speaking, perhaps he was not a handsome man He was too slim, too ethereal, if onesufficiently commonplace to be described as raced in face and figure,' for he possessed that rare attribute _distinction_, and his face, with its wonderfully lu expression, had a beauty peculiar to itself, and one which harmonised perfectly with the quaint wisdom of his mind

That wisdom was so deep, yet so whimsical, so peculiar and so many-sided that one can only apply to its possessor another quotation half indignantly thrown at hiureat charrows That one small head can carry all he knows'

He bowed to the compliment, he demurred as to the smallness of his head, and he enjoyed the quotation immensely With the sa Both showed considerable skill, but the umpire decided that Louis had won, so he bore off in triumph the prize of a bottle of olives, and was only sorry that he could not compel the loser to share his feast, which he well kneould be as abhorrent to her as it was delightful to hi breeze, its swirling dust of March, there will always be associated in my mind certain memories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and of that happy home of the Stevenson fa cosily at the foot of the Pentlands, claimed them year by year, but every winter found them, for business or pleasure, established in that most homelike house, the s of which, to the front, looked into the Heriot Row gardens, and at the back, from that upper flat where was the book-lined study of the son of the house, snatched a glied shores of Fife

Across the blue Forth in Fife, at the little seaside town of Leven, well known to golfing fame, there had settled in 1866 an uncle of R L

Stevenson, Dr John Balfour, as noted for his gallantry and skill throughout the Indian Mutiny, and in more than one outbreak of cholera in India and at horaphic picture in _Rando a visit to the Fife coast, where his father was hts and harbours

In 1849 when hoo to Davidson's Mains, in the parish of Cramond, where as a specialist in cholera symptoms he was amazed to find the outbreak as virulent and as fatal as the Asiatic cholera he had seen in India In 1866, when another wave of cholera swept over Britain, he was asked to go to Slateford, where he coped with its ravages al life in every case after he went, except those already too far gone before his arrival In late autue broke out seriously in the small towns on the coast of Fife, and Dr Balfour went to Leven, where the doctor had just died of it, and a state of panic prevailed, and there too he succeeded in quickly sta retired fro heavy on hand, so he acceded to the request of the inhabitants and went to Leven to take up practice there His wife, as a cousin of his own, and their four children, shortly after followed hih, and he built a house called 'The Turret' there, where he rereatly larew up in inti Balfours, and went out and in to the doctor's house, receiving in it such kindness froarded by me as a second home, and its inmates were looked upon as one's 'ain folk' As one's 'ain folk,' too, by-and-bye, were regarded those other Balfour fae W Balfour's household and Miss Balfour, and the nephews and nieces who had their home with her--who made of the little Fife town their holiday resort Later an Edinburgh school and long visits to Edinburgh relatives made the Scotch capital as familiar to me as Fife; and then the Stevenson family in their home at Heriot Roere added to the little circle of friends, now, alas! so thinned by grievous blanks Old and young have passed into 'The Silent Land,' and life is infinitely the poorer for those severed friendshi+ps--those lost regards of early days

Not a few of the old folk were notable in their tieneration have made, or mean to athers so much of romance of honour and of distinction as about Robert Louis Stevenson, who used to visit his uncle's house in Leven, doubtless from one of those expeditions to Anstruther, of which he tells us that he spent his ti a perfunctory attention to the harbour, at which his father's fir ros It is on record that he felt a thrill of well-merited pride when an Anstruther small boy pointed to him, as he stood beside the worke' But he assuredly knewthan in his hours of inspection, although the out-of-door, wind-swept, wave-splashed part of engineering was never so abhorrent to him as office work In the office he was known very little; but tradition has it that a ss is still treasured there as a characteristic ht has been known to coineers afflicted with a like shakiness in their orthography, that the now much appreciated

Stories of all sorts were handed about in our little clique of the wondrous Robert Louis whose sayings and doings were already precious to an appreciative circle of relatives and friends But it was not till sometime in the autumn of 1869 that he first became personally known to me

The introduction took place on a Septe-rooreat deal of awe in a youthful admirer who even then had literary aspirations, and who therefore looked up to him with much respect as soarded as one of the quaintest, theone's acquaintances There was about him, in those days, a whihtful vanity that never wholly left hi, as it would have done in any one more commonplace, was so intrinsically a part of his artistic nature that it was rather attractive than otherwise Full of delightful hus--when he took the trouble to say anything which he frequently did not!--were teeht, and you wondered, long after you had talked with his, and found food for ested itself before

In those days he was not only original hiing to the surface in others the very s it and appreciating it in a way that was sti him When the little seaside toas eh visits for the season, in February and March, one kindness of his was very greatly prized by souiled the tediu an aazine, called _Ours_ For this, in 1872 and 1873, Mr Stevenson gave us a short contribution, _The Nun of Aberhuern_, a trifle in his own graceful style, which, as he was even then beginning to be known in the world of letters, we valued much Moreover, he took a friendly interest in the sheets of blue MS paper so closely written over with our somewhat juvenile productions, and made here a criticism, there a prediction, which has not been without its effect on the future work of some of us