Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/79

 THE APPRENTICESHIP OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

is a faithful Scot on a hillside in Samoa, much given to boasting in print of his high-set, far-shining palace, his nineteen waterfalls, and the blue sky over all. This is public; but when a far-travelled, much-enduring letter, at once broad and slim, overtops the brae and bears down upon us, having for trade-mark the crow-toe calligraphy which at the distance of a long sea mile proclaims our Louis Stevenson, what a different tale it is we hear. Instead of such public boastings, as of a night-returning boy who whistles loud to keep his courage up, we have only "Ö why left I my hame," with variations. "Do you know," we read, "that the dearest burn to me in the world is that which drums and pours in cunning wimples in that glen of yours behind Glencorse old kirk." "O that I were the lad I once was, sitting under old Torrance, that old shepherd of let-well-alone, and watching with awe the waving of the old black gloves over the Bible—the preacher's white finger-ends meanwhile aspiring through. Man, I would even be willing to sit under you, a sore declension truly, just to be there!"

Wherever he may be, under south English "roof of pine," or in Samoa on the back of the broad Pacific, Robert Louis Stevenson kindles like a flash to a memory of the country home of his boyhood. The eternal child in him rises to it like a trout at a fly.

"O man, to listen to ye, is like a cast-back into my youth! And to think that you can step to your front door and look out on Rullion Green and Swanston, Glencorse and Carnethy—and yet never think it worth your while!"

There is "a nameless trickle that springs in the green side of Allermuir, and is fed from Halkerside with a perennial teacupful"—a streamlet with a brief race and no history, save that by its side a dreamy, loose-jointed stripling used to come and sit, and most industriously make bad verses.