illustration of what I have said -

"MY DEAR DR JAPP, - My father has gone, but I think I may take it
upon me to ask you to keep the book. Of all things you could do to

endear yourself to me you have done the best, for, from your
letter, you have taken a fancy to my father.

"I do not know how to thank you for your kind trouble in the matter
of THE SEA-COOK, but I am not unmindful. My health is still

poorly, and I have added intercostal rheumatism - a new attraction,
which sewed me up nearly double for two days, and still gives me 'a

list to starboard' - let us be ever nautical. . . . I do not think
with the start I have, there will be any difficulty in letting Mr

Henderson go ahead whenever he likes. I will write my story up to
its legitimateconclusion, and then we shall be in a position to

judge whether a sequel would be desirable, and I myself would then
know better about its practicability from the story-telling point

of view. - Yours very sincerely" target="_blank" title="ad.真诚地；诚恳地">sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON."
A little later came the following:-

"THE COTTAGE, CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR. (NO DATE.)
"MY DEAR DR JAPP, - Herewith go nine chapters. I have been a

little seedy; and the two last that I have written seem to me on a
false venue; hence the smallness of the batch. I have now, I hope,

in the three last sent, turned the corner, with no great amount of
dulness.

"The map, with all its names, notes, soundings, and things, should
make, I believe, an admirableadvertisement for the story. Eh?

"I hope you got a telegram and letter I forwarded after you to
Dinnat. - Believe me, yours very sincerely" target="_blank" title="ad.真诚地；诚恳地">sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS

STEVENSON."
In the afternoon, if fine and dry, we went walking, and Stevenson

would sometimes tell us stories of his short experience at the
Scottish Bar, and of his first and only brief. I remember him

contrasting that with his experiences as an engineer with Bob Bain,
who, as manager, was then superintending the building of a

breakwater. Of that time, too, he told the choicest stories, and
especially of how, against all orders, he bribed Bob with five

shillings to let him go down in the diver's dress. He gave us a
splendid description - finer, I think, than even that in his

MEMORIES - of his sensations on the sea-bottom, which seems to have
interested him as deeply, and suggested as many strange fancies, as

anything which he ever came across on the surface. But the
possibility of enterprises of this sort ended - Stevenson lost his

interest in engineering.
Stevenson's father had, indeed, been much exercised in his day by

theological questions and difficulties, and though he remained a
staunch adherent of the Established Church of Scotland he knew well

and practically what is meant by the term "accommodation," as it is
used by theologians in reference to creeds and formulas; for he had

over and over again, because of the strictcharacter of the
subscription required from elders of the Scottish Church declined,

as I have said, to accept the office. In a very express sense you
could see that he bore the marks of his past in many ways - a

quick, sensitive, in some ways even a fantastic-minded man, yet
with a strange solidity and common-sense amid it all, just as

though ferns with the veritable fairies' seed were to grow out of a
common stone wall. He looked like a man who had not been without

sleepless nights - without troubles, sorrows, and perplexities, and
even yet, had not wholly risen above some of them, or the results

of them. His voice was "low and sweet" - with just a possibility
in it of rising to a shrillish key. A sincere and faithful man,

who had walked very demurely through life, though with a touch of
sudden, bright, quiet humour and fancy, every now and then crossing

the grey of his characteristic pensiveness or melancholy, and
drawing effect from it. He was most frank and genial with me, and

I greatly honour his memory. (2)
Thomas Stevenson, with a strange, sad smile, told me how much of a

disappointment, in the first stage, at all events, Louis (he always
called his son Louis at home), had caused him, by failing to follow

up his profession at the Scottish Bar. How much he had looked
forward, after the engineering was abandoned, to his devoting

himself to the work of the Parliament House (as the Hall of the
Chief Court is called in Scotland, from the building having been

while yet there was a Scottish Parliament the place where it sat),
though truly one cannot help feeling how much Stevenson's very air

and figure would have been out of keeping among the bewigged,
pushing, sharp-set, hard-featured, and even red-faced and red-nosed

(some of them, at any rate) company, who daily walked the
Parliament House, and talked and gossiped there, often of other

things than law and equity. "Well, yes, perhaps it was all for the
best," he said, with a sigh, on my having interjected the remark

that R. L. Stevenson was wielding far more influence than he ever
could have done as a Scottish counsel, even though he had risen

rapidly in his profession, and become Lord-Advocate or even a
judge.

There was, indeed, a very pathetic kind of harking back on the
might-have-beens when I talked with him on this subject. He had

reconciled himself in a way to the inevitable, and, like a sensible
man, was now inclined to make the most and the best of it. The

marriage, which, on the report of it, had been but a new
disappointment to him, had, as if by magic, been transformed into a

blessing in his mind and his wife's by personal contact with Fanny
Van der Griff Stevenson, which no one who ever met her could wonder

at; but, nevertheless, his dream of seeing his only son walking in
the pathways of the Stevensons, and adorning a profession in

Edinburgh, and so winning new and welcome laurels for the family
and the name, was still present with him constantly, and by

contrast, he was depressed with contemplation of the real state of
the case, when, as I have said, I pointed out to him, as more than

once I did, what an influence his son was wielding now, not only
over those near to him, but throughout the world, compared with

what could have come to him as a lighthouse engineer, however
successful, or it may be as a briefless advocate or barrister,

walking, hardly in glory and in joy, the Hall of the Edinburgh
Parliament House. And when I pictured the yet greater influence

that was sure to come to him, he only shook his head with that
smile which tells of hopes long-cherished and lost at last, and of

resignation gained, as though at stern duty's call and an honest
desire for the good of those near and dear to him. It moved me

more than I can say, and always in the midst of it he adroitly, and
somewhat abruptly, changed the subject. Such penalties do parents

often pay for the honour of giving geniuses to the world. Here,
again, it may be true, "the individual withers but the world is

more and more."
The impression of a kind of tragic fatality was but added to when

Stevenson would speak of his father in such terms of love and
admiration as quite moved one, of his desire to please him, of his

highest respect and gratitude to him, and pride in having such a
father. It was most characteristic that when, in his travels in

America, he met a gentleman who expressed plainly his keen
disappointment on learning that he had but been introduced to the

son and not to the father - to the as yet but budding author - and
not to the builder of the great lighthouse beacons that constantly

saved mariners from shipwreck round many stormy coasts, he should
record the incident, as his readers will remember, with such a

strange mixture of a pride and filialgratitude, and half humorous
humiliation. Such is the penalty a son of genius often pays in

heart-throbs for the inability to do aught else but follow his
destiny - follow his star, even though as Dante says:-

"Se tu segui tua stella
Non puoi fallire a glorioso porto." (3)

What added a keen thrill as of quivering flesh exposed, was that
Thomas Stevenson on one side was exactly the man to appreciate such

attainments and work in another, and I often wondered how far the
sense of Edinburgh propriety and worldly estimates did weigh with

him here.
Mr Stevenson mentioned to me a peculiar fact which has since been