the assurance with a smile. What! Louis! so simple, kindly, natural; so all-round a good fellow; so like all the rest of us, only nicer!

And I am quite sure that in his inmost heart at this period he could never really have looked forward to or expected the fame which later came to him, and which grows and expands as time gives us the perspective wherewith to view it in all its roundness and bigness and essential simplicity. In fact, in introducing himself to me, he remarked simply that he was "a writer-chap," or hoped to be one.

I was told of another rainy afternoon "blague party," at which I did not chance to be present, during which Bob Stevenson amused himself by forecasting the future careers of those present. When he came to his cousin he remarked with a satirical little smile: "There sits Louis, as smug and complacent as any old type de bourgeois. I have not the least doubt that he fondly imagines that one of these days they will be publishing all of his dinky, private correspondence-'the letters of R. L. S.'-in boards." And Louis joined as heartily as any one in the laugh which the sally raised. Bob, at least, did live to see the publication of the "Vailima Letters,' and I have often wondered if he remembered this little incident as he thumbed their leaves.

But I would not give the impression that the artist colony of Grez during that memorable summer was wholly masculine in its make-up, for this was far indeed from being the case, and most of the unforgetable dramatic quality of the place and the time would have been lacking but for the presence of a very fair proportion of the female element. There was a certain return to primitive standards in the relation between the sexes, but primitive standards, nevertheless, in which honor and a regard for the square deal held a high place. In matters of morals Stevenson himself was the least censorious of judges, providing there was no infringement of the law of nature or the law of friendship; though perhaps it would be truer to say that he entered no judgment

either for or against the accused, preferring to leave the decision in such matters to the Maker of all laws.

But if he heard of anything mean or underhand, any tricky blow beneath the belt, he was a very firebrand, flaming with a fury which nothing could quell. I remember one case in which he forced two very unwilling opponents to accept a duel as the only possible solution of an entanglement involving an unmanly act on the part of one of the pair. Fortunately the duel was never fought, the chief offender considering discretion the better part of valor and deciding that the woods about Barbison at that particular season of the year offered better material for the painter than the river at Grez.

I would not, however, by any means have it understood that there was in the colony no sense of decency or morality in the ordinary acceptance of those terms, for that would be a misstatement as manifestly unfair and untrue as to claim a standard of rigid puritanism for the whole region. If there was a fair sprinkling of the grisette and the model element, which had followed the painters down from Paris, there were also a certain number of very serious women-painters who were studying hard, and some of whom were destined to make an enviable place for themselves later on. Among these I may mention Mlles. Loestadt and Lilienthal, Swedish painters of genuine talent, and more particularly the lady "Trusty, dusky, vivid, and true" to whom Robert Louis Stevenson inscribed the most beautiful love-song of our time, and who later on was destined to become his wife. Mrs. Osbourne could not at the time have been more than thirty-five years of age, a grave and remarkable type of womanhood, with eyes of a depth and a somber beauty which I have never seen equaled-eyes, nevertheless, that upon occasion could sparkle with humor and brim over with laughter. Yet upon the whole Mrs. Osbourne impressed me as first of all a woman of profound character and serious judgment, who could, if occasion called, have been the leader in some great movement. But she

belonged to the quattrocento rather than to the end of the nineteenth century. Had she been born a Medici, she would have held rank as one of the remarkable women of all time.

That she was a woman of intellectual attainments is proved by the fact that she was already a magazine writer of recognized ability, and that at the moment when Stevenson first came into her life she was making a living for herself and her two children with her pen. But this, after all, is a more or less ordinary accomplishment, and Mrs. Osbourne was in no sense ordinary. Indeed, she was gifted with a mysterious sort of over-intelligence which is almost impossible to describe, but which impressed itself upon every one who came within the radius of her influence. Napoleon had much of this; likewise his arch-enemy the great Duke of Wellington; and among women Catharine of Russia and perhaps Elizabeth of England. She was therefore both physically and mentally the very antithesis of the gay, hilarious, open-minded, and open-hearted Stevenson, and for that very reason, perhaps, the woman in all the world best fitted to be his life-comrade and helpmate. At any rate, we may well ask ourselves if anywhere else he would have found the kind of understanding and devotion which. she gave him from the day of their first meeting at Grez until the day of his death. in far-away Samoa; if anywhere else there was a woman of equal attainments who would willingly, nay, gladly, throw aside all of the pleasures and comforts of civilization to live among savages, and the still rougher whites of the South Pacific, in order that her husband might have just a little more oxygen for his failing lungs, a little more chance for a respite and an extension of his shortening years? Probably no one ever better deserved than she the noble tribute of verse which her husband gave her, and from which I have quoted the opening line.

Both she and her daughter Isobel had been studying art in Paris through the winter, and had joined the regular AngloSaxon migration to Grez in the early sum

mer. The latter, then a bewitching girl of seventeen, later became widely known as Mrs. Strong, Stevenson's amanuensis and biographer.

The last time that I ever saw Stevenson was a year or two later and in semi-tragic circumstances. The Osbournes had returned to their native California, whither Stevenson had journeyed some little time later as "An Amateur Immigrant," and where he had lived for a space as "The Silverado Squatter." In the early spring of the following year, however, he and Mrs. Stevenson returned once more to their old haunts about the forest of Fontainebleau. In the meantime I had been to Italy, whence I had just brought back to Paris the usual six-by-ten-foot Salon canvas. Having seen this precious work of art duly delivered at the doors of the Palais de l'Industrie, I hastened to join the gay and care-free cavalcade which at that season always makes for the woods, generally toward Barbison or Fontainebleau. This time our own band of half a dozen, including my brother Alexander Harrison, the marine-painter, and Ruger Donoho, the landscape-man, were headed for Barbison and the Pension Siron, where we arrived late one evening, only to be informed that all sleeping accommodations were taken, and that the best we might expect was a row of cots in the bare loft of the annex, on the opposite side of the village street. This was no hardship, however, and as an excellent late souper was soon steaming on the table, we accepted the situation gaily enough, smoking a pipe after supper in the still aisles of the forest before retiring for the night.

It was only at the very earliest peep of dawn that the disadvantages of our communal sleeping-apartment became apparent. One of our party woke between three and four o'clock A.M., and, after lying with open eyes for half an hour or so, decided that this sort of thing was not fair play. Whereupon he rose silently, seized a pillow, and moving from cot to cot, delivered to the occupant of each an impartial and sounding thwack.

Instantly there was pandemonium in

T was a memorable day for Stevenson

IT.

when the Cigarette and the Arethusa moored at the foot of the narrow little garden which leads from the shores of the Loing up to the old Pension Chevillon at Grez. Could he have foreseen that the apparently simple act of tying his canoerope to the landing-post that morning was to make of him a world-wanderer, that it would cut him off definitely from his beloved Scotland and all that Scotland meant to him, that it would lead him as an "Amateur Immigrant" to California, that it would start him on that year-long cruise of the Pacific, and waft him at last, like a piece of driftwood, to far-off Samoacould he have foreseen all this, would he, I wonder, have set foot ashore that warm summer morning, or, turning his prow once more to the current, paddled on down-stream to Paris and the sea? Truly I believe that he would have landed only the more joyously, for Stevenson was nothing if not a true sport. Despite a

frail physique, he sought adventure eagerly and stood always ready to meet it more than half-way. Nothing ever daunted him, and nothing so roused him to anger as any suggestion that his own health should be allowed to weigh in the balance when there was question of adventure by flood or by field. As a matter of fact, and as time proved, he possessed an astonishing reserve of nervous energy, and in certain cases where other stronger men went to pieces, his high spirits seemed to serve him adequately in lieu of physical strength.

But he well knew, and has himself said, that the great adventure is not that which we go forth to seek in far places, but that which comes to seek us by the fireside. And this was more than half true in his own case, for it was not upon any business of his own that he came to Grez, but rather because our fellow-art-student and comrade Willie Simpson was a brother to Sir Walter Simpson, who was the Cigar

ette of Stevenson's "An Inland Voyage" and his present companion.

It was a gay, picturesque, and genuinely Bohemian community in which he found himself at Grez, and it has seemed to me that it might be well worth while to describe it in some detail, in view of the fact that it was destined to form the background of Stevenson's life for many months to come.

The nucleus of the colony was AngloSaxon, and the majority of its members were either English or Americans; but there was a sufficient sprinkling of French and Scandinavians to give a cosmopolitan. quality to the gathering, and an occasional Spaniard or Italian added a touch of Southern color. All of its members were either artists, artists' models en villégiature, or students of art in painting and sculpture, or in music, literature, or the drama.

The one who always stands out most vividly in my own mind and memory is my beloved chum and studio-companion Theodore Robinson, who is now taking his place beside Inness, Wyant, and Winslow Homer as one of our American old masters. Robinson, like Stevenson, was a semi-invalid, a great sufferer from asthma, which never gave him a moment's respite; but, like Stevenson again, he never allowed his weakness to interfere in any way with the main business of life or to intrude itself upon others. His infectious laugh I can hear to this day, and the subdued chuckle with which he met the little daily contretemps of existence was a tonic and an inspiration to those about him. Robinson was far from handsome in the

classic sense. An enormous head, with goggle-eyes and a whopper-jaw, was balanced on a frail body by means of a neck of extreme tenuity; and stooping shoulders, with a long, slouching gait, did not add anything of grace or of beauty to his general appearance. But when one of the French comrades threw an arm about his shoulders, and casting a sidewise and puzzled glance upon him remarked, "Tu es vilain, Robinson; mais je t'aime," we all understood, for out of those goggle-eyes

shone the courage of a Bayard, and in their depths brooded the soul of a poet and dreamer, while his whole person radiated a delightful and ineffable sense of humor. Stevenson and he at once became bosom friends and companions, for they were hewn out of the same block.

I shall not forget Stevenson's joy at the manner in which Robinson once put an end to a rather tiresome rainy-day discussion on the subject of genealogy, during which we had been treated to more or less colorful accounts of the distinguished lineage of most of those present.

Robinson had remained silent throughout the discussion, with only an occasional subterranean chuckle to indicate that he was listening to the conversation. Finally some one called out:

"Bobbie, we have not yet heard from you. Who were your noble ancestors, anyway?"

With a subdued twinkle he replied: "Well, if you really wish to know, I will tell you. My father was a farmer, and my grandparents were both very respectable and deserving domestic servants. I have never carried my investigation any further up the family-tree.'

Louis's cousin, the Bob of the "Vailima Letters," who came down from Paris shortly after Stevenson's own arrival. Years later, as professor of art at Oxford and as the author of a remarkable monograph upon Velasquez, he was destined to become widely known throughout the world. At that time, however, he was endeavoring to demonstrate to himself and to others his right to be ranked seriously as a landscape-painter, and wasting considerable quantities of perfectly good pigment in the effort, which before. many months he was frankly to abandon as a mistake. But although his talent did not lie in the direction of pictorial expression, Bob Stevenson was, more nearly than any other mortal I have ever met, a genius in the true sense of the word; unfortunately for himself, however, and still more unfortunately for the world at large, his genius could expand only under conditions. which precluded its finding permanent expression. Just as those of us who have heard Edwin Booth play Hamlet know that there never was or never could be such another Hamlet, so those of us who have heard Bob Stevenson converse know that, in this generation at least, there never has been or could be such another talker. But for its fullest and best expression, his special talent demanded an interlocutor, or at least the figment of an opponent in the scintillating monologue which he was pleased to style a discussion. If it comes to a mere question of genius pure and simple, no one who knew the two cousins intimately would have hesitated. for an instant to award the primacy to Bob, and Louis himself would have been the first to concur in the justice of this decision. When the after-dinner coffee was on the table in the old salle à manger, it was Louis's custom to stir up a discussion upon some subject connected with ethics or morals or the general conduct of life, and then, if he succeeded in getting Bob started, to sit back and enjoy the intellectual feast which was sure to follow, just dropping in a word of dissent now and then in order to keep the stream flowing.

On these occasions Bob's flights of imagination were not only brilliant to a degree, but they were often humorous and most entertaining. Not infrequently they took the form of a story, with a complicated plot evolved on the spur of the moment, and with characters who by their acts and words gave living form to the abstraction which he had set out to ride to earth. Louis, being the artist that he was, made notes, and several of the stories which later appeared in the "New Arabian Nights" and are there duly accredited to "my cousin Robert Mowbray Stevenson," were thrown off by the latter during one of these impromptu symposia. First among these was the famous "Suicide Club," to which, however, Stevenson himself added what was perhaps the most original and telling touch-the incident of the young man with the cream tarts. The gruesome idea of the main story grew out of an indignant protest on the part of Bob to an opinion set forth by his cousin to the effect that in the domain of morals men were in no sense free agents, and that no man had the right to dispose of his own life any more than he had the right to dispose of the life of his friend or neighbor. Bob in reply quoted the verse from Omar:

What, without asking, hither hurried

Whence?

And, without asking, whither hurried hence! Ah! contrite heaven endowed us with the vine

To drug the memory of that insolence!

contending hotly that inasmuch as we had not been consulted when we were thus rudely and without our own consent dumped into life, the option was surely ours as to the time and the manner of leaving it.

Then followed the inevitable monologue, which gradually developed into the plot of the "Suicide Club" as printed in the "New Arabian Nights," and in which Bob set forth his own ideas as to the most agreeable mode of shuffling off this mortal coil. But not quite content with his first effort, he proceeded to evolve an alternate