choose incidents and situations to develop it, or lastly — you must bear with me while I try to make this clear" -(here he made a gesture with his hand as if he were trying to shape something and give it outline and form)

"you may take a certain atmosphere and get action and persons to express and realise it. I'll give you an example- The Merry Men. There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the story to express the sentiment with which that coast affected me."

It was on this last scheme that Sophia Scarlet had been conceived, the atmosphere being that of a large plantation in Tahiti, such as Mr. Stewart's had been at Atimono twenty years before.1 It may be that the method did not lend itself readily to an effective sketch of the plot; the draft of the beginning of the story seems to me better than I thought the outline at the time. But in any case there could be no hesitation in the choice. Weir of Hermiston was begun, and for three or four days Stevenson was in such a seventh heaven as he has described: 2 he worked all day and all evening, writing or talking, debating points, devising characters and incidents, ablaze with enthusiasm, and abounding with energy. No finished story was, or ever will be, so good as Weir of Hermiston shone to us in those days by the light of its author's first ardour of creation.

Then he settled down, and a few days later read aloud to the family, as was his custom, the first draft of the opening chapters. After that but little progress was made, and in January, 1893, St. Ives was begun as a short story, the visit of the ladies to the prisoners in 1 South Sea Bubbles, 24th August, 1870. 2 See vol. ii. p. 38.

Edinburgh being introduced at first as a mere episode without result. Before long, however, Stevenson left home with his wife and Mrs. Strong upon his last visit to Sydney, all work was stopped, and on his return in six weeks' time he began a short story for the Illustrated London News. He had lately been reading again Barbey d'Aurévilly, and his mind had turned to Brittany. The new tale dealt with the Chouans in 1793, and was to be called The Owl. But it did not prosper; the writer was not well, and he was anxious about his wife's health, and when one chapter had been written, he gave up the attempt and took up a half-finished piece of work.

This was a story begun with Mr. Osbourne in Honolulu just after their return from Tahiti, and known at that time as The Pearl Fisher and later as The Schooner Farallone. Mr. Osbourne had drafted the opening chapters, and no work of his had ever earned more praise from his stepfather. But at that moment an area of several acres behind the house was being cleared of forest and planted with pineapples for exportation a scheme which it was hoped would make the plantation pay, and for the time being this engaged all Mr. Osbourne's energies. Stevenson, talking to me. one day, produced the unfinished draft of the story, which at this time included only the first ten or eleven chapters, and debated what course he should pursue. The fragment was originally intended as a prologue; Attwater was to be blinded with vitriol and then return to England. The remainder of the action of the book was to take place in England, and chiefly in Bloomsbury, where the Herricks lived. Stevenson now recon

sidered the whole question, accepted a shorter ending, and grew more and more interested in the character of Attwater, as he worked it out. It is perhaps worth remarking that the picture of the arrival of the schooner at the new island gives better than anything else some of the charm of such cruises as those which delighted its author, who found no experience more exhilarating than "when you sight an island and drop anchor in a new world." 1

The fables begun before he had left England and promised to Messrs. Longmans, he attacked again, and from time to time added to their number. The reference to Odin perhaps is due to his reading of the Sagas, which led him to attempt a tale in the same style, called "The Waif Woman." But I find no clue to any fresh study of Celtic legends that could have suggested the last and most beautiful fable of all, called "The Song of the Morrow," which dealt with the king's daughter of Duntrine, who "had no care for the morrow and no power upon the hour," and is like nothing else Stevenson ever wrote.

Besides all these and the letters to the Times, as well as his private correspondence, there were endless other schemes, for the most part projected and perhaps not even begun, never certainly brought near to completion. He wrote to Mr. Charles Baxter: "My schemes. are all in the air, and vanish and reappear again like shapes in the clouds." So likewise to Miss Boodle: "I have a projected, entirely planned love-story-everybody will think it dreadfully improper, I'm afraid called Cannonmills. And I've a vague, rosy haze 1 Letters, ii. 120.

before me a love-story too, but not improper- called The Rising Sun. It's the name of the wayside inn where the story, or much of the story, runs; but it's a kind of a pun: it means the stirring up of a boy by falling in love, and how he rises in the estimation of a girl who despised him, though she liked him and had befriended him. I really scarce see beyond their childhood yet, but I want to go beyond, and make each out-top the other by successions: it should be pretty and true if I could do it."

Neither of these was ever written. There was also a play for home representation, showing the adventures of an English tourist in Samoa; and I can remember two more serious schemes which were likewise without result. In the August before he died, he drew up with Mr. Osbourne the outline of a history, or of a series of the most striking episodes, of the Indian Mutiny, to be written for boys, and sent home for the books necessary for its execution. Another day he sketched the plan of an English grammar, to be illustrated by examples from the English classics. These are but a few, the many are unremembered; but all alike belong, not to the fleet of masterpieces unlaunched, but the larger and more inglorious squadron whose keels were never even laid down.

To do their best for twoscore years!

A ready soldier, here I stand,
Primed for Thy command,

With burnished sword.

If this be faith, O Lord,

Help Thou mine unbelief

And be my battle brief."

Envoy to No. XXV. of Songs of Travel.

THE climate of Samoa had apparently answered the main purpose of preserving Stevenson from any disabling attacks of illness, and allowing him to lead a life of strenuous activity. "I do not ask for health," he had said to his stepson at Bournemouth, "but I will go anywhere and live in any place where I can enjoy the ordinary existence of a human being." And this had now been granted to him beyond his utmost hope.

In all the time he was in Samoa he had but two or three slight hemorrhages, that were cured within a very few days. The consumption in his lungs was definitely arrested, but it seems certain that a structural weakening of the arteries was slowly and inevitably going on, al