Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/148

 .) But the budding romancer probably had no misgivings, and the young lad, Lloyd Osbourne, owing to whom the book was written, and who gave orders that no women were to appear in the story, was there to indicate by his enthusiasm the reception that Treasure Island was to receive from the youth of the world. Like so many others of his prefaces, whether in verse or in prose, this one was not used when the book was published; and its present first appearance in type is an especially interesting contribution to Stevenson literature.

It is worth adding, perhaps, that when Stevenson, writing from the "Schooner Equator, at sea, 190 miles off Samoa, Monday, December 2nd, 1889," gave his friend Colvin—later Sir Sidney—the plan of his proposed book, The South Seas, he began with the heading "Part I. General. Of Schooners, islands, and maroons"—that is, with the first line of this poem.

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