Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/167

SCOTLAND'S LAMENT

IN MEMORIAM

one came in with omens of sadness on his face and told us that Stevenson was dead, each man had a sense of personal bereavement. None of us had ever seen him, save one—and that was long ago; none of us had ever read a letter of his writing, save one—and he ransacked his memory for the least word. We had no "eagle's feather" to show; there was nothing between this man and us save the mystical tie that binds a writer and his readers in the kingdom of letters. He had led us in through the ivory gate, and shown us things eye hath not seen; and all his service had been given at a great cost of suffering. Filled with the enthusiasm of his art, he beat back death time after time, and only succumbed like J. R. Green and Symonds, his brethren in letters and affliction, after he had achieved imperishable fame, "monumentum aere perennius."